Over the past days there have been reports that scores of the indigenous tribes people have again brought the impoundment (flooding) of the dam at the Murum dam in the Malaysian Borneo state of Sarawak, to a grinding halt. Tensions are mounting at the site. However, Police arrested one man and dismantled the Penan shelters. More than 100 Penan are reported blockading the dam site.
The Plight Of Borneo’s Penan Tribe
In the damp, lush and humid rainforest of northern Sarawak, on Borneo, the indigenous nomadic hunter-gatherer Penan are one of the last such groups in South East Asia.
Out of the 10,000 Penan living in the Malaysian state of Sarawak, Borneo, it is said only 200 nomadic people are left. Some living nomadically, relying on the forest for their existence.
Armed
with only spears and blowpipe, for centuries the decimated Penan have
finally 
decided to stand-up and fight
daily against the corporate giants by
banding together to stand firm - and they have finally received recognition.
decided to stand-up and fight
daily against the corporate giants by
banding together to stand firm - and they have finally received recognition.
Meanwhile,
vast tracts of Sarawak's rainforest has been stripped of its valuable timber.
Now forestry firms are eying forest lands for conversion to oil palm
plantations, which will likely leave the Penan even worse off since these
estates support less game than even logged-over forest.
The Sarawak state
government does not recognize the Penan’s rights to their land. Since the
1970s, it has backed large-scale
commercial logging on tribal land across Sarawak.In 1987, many Penan communities protested against the logging of their land by blockading the roads cut though the forest by the logging companies. More than a hundred Penan were arrested.
The Penan have kept up their resistance, and continue to mount blockades against the companies.
Some
have managed to prevent the companies from entering their land, but others have
seen much of their forest devastated.While all of the valuable trees have been cut down completely in order to establish oil palm plantations, the Sarawak government also build twelve new hydroelectric dams, flooding many villages belonging to Penan and other indigenous people.
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