THE PENAN OF MALAYSIAN BORNEO STILL STRUGGLE TO SAVE JUNGGLE
The Penan are the iconic people of the Sarawak jungle. Most communities had settled into villages and rural life of one form or another over the last hundred years, but the Penan steadfastly stuck to their nomadic ways.With just a few possessions, easily carried on their backs, they have had nothing to lose but the jungle they live from. Which is why they are the community that has fought hardest and longest to prevent its destruction by greedy and relentless logging.
However, we would be unwise to dismiss them as simple or backward people. One should reserve that judgement for those narrow-minded, unimaginative IQs who can think only of the ringgit and jewels and houses they can buy from cutting it down.
The Penan understand the deeper value of the Borneo jungle, the world’s oldest and most bio-diverse environment on earth. If Sarawak Chief Minister, Taib Mahmud had not been so eager to get rich as quickly as possible, he too would have done well to consider the pharmaceutical, DNA, tourism, scientific and other values of this region of enormous weatlh, variety and promise.- Instead he is turning it into a single crop plantation that will soon run out of soil due to to massive erosion and turn to desert. He is also converting one of the earth’s two key ‘lungs’, the great jungles that breath water into the air and suck out dangerous carbon dioxide, into on of the major causes of Global Warming.
The Penan understand these things, even though few have gone to school, and they hold a deep love for the beauty and life that thrives in their paradise on earth. But, Taib either does not understand or worse, blinded by money, he doesn’t care.It is because the Penan are still striving to live off the forest and to defend their hunting areas, that they have had some of the worst treatment at the hands of Taib’s licenced loggers and unlicenced gangsters.
Many, many communities in Sarawak have suffered from these problems, but it is the Penan who have been almost wiped out in numbers.- Taib refuses to give them the slightest respect or to allow them the smallest remaining area of jungle to call their own. His ministers are on record as saying that the jungle needs to be ‘cleared’ of such communities (to make way for their rape of the environment of course). For this reason we can add genocide to the list of crimes this man will one day have to answer.
One of the most shocking examples of his arrogant small-mindedness has been his refusal to perform his most basic duty as a Chief Minister in maintaining law and order and preventing vile crimes in these areas. There have long been reports of rapes by loggers against the gentle Penan tribespeople, yet he has refused to take action to protect them or to acknowledge the problem.- As ever, his police force has been instructed to turn a blind eye to such outrages for the benefit of the logging tycoons – Taib’s business partners who are working to drive the native people from the jungle.
- Likewise, over 30 years of relentless exploitation Taib has gained vast wealth from taking the timber from Sarawak, yet the Penan have received no benefit, despite the Chief Minister’s clap-trap about progress and development.
In all this time he has yet to even provide the majority of them with an Identity card or in many cases even birth certificates, so that they can participate in any way in the benefits of the State. Few indeed have received their fundamental right of a vote in what he laughably tries to call a democracy.To the contrary, Taib knows that the Penan would vote against him, so he pretends they live too far away for him and his officials to find and register them.
There is no such problem it seems when it comes to finding and taking the trees from among which they live however!
This film is a testimony to the Penan’s continuing struggle and gives one reason for the work that has been undertaken by Sarawak Report.
Source: Sarawak reports
WE ARE NOT THIEVES - SARAWAK’S PENAN
MIRI, Sarawak, Malaysia - Somewhere in Malaysian Borneo, hundreds of affronted Penan native customary rights (NCR) landowners, who have been accused of stealing oil palm fresh fruit bunches (ffb) from four major government-linked oil palm plantations, have lodged a police report objecting to the allegation.
The Penan community in Kampung Ugos, Jambatan Suai, in Baru Niah have taken offence to accusations levelled against them by Sarawak State Land Development Minister James Masing.
Penan chief Ugos Sugon, who lodged the police report on behalf of his people at the Batu Niah police station on Aug 12, said Masing had no right to call them thieves.- “We are not thieves… we are not happy at being accused of stealing from our own land. We have been waiting for our dividends for a very long time.
- “In February 2009, after waiting 13 years we received a cash cheque of RM500,000 to be divided among us.
- “The 500 of us in Kampung Ugos are to share the RM500,000… after 13 years. It is not right,” he said.
Ugos and his people had, in 1999, agreed to jointly develop their NCR land with the Land Custody Development Authority (LCDA) and its band of private investors. However, the “deal”, according to the villagers, was somewhat unfair to them. Many claimed that they had not even seen the agreement.
The villagers believe the joint-venture (JV) project involving their NCR lands has made millions for LCDA and the private investors “in view of the very good oil palm price for many years”.
- They feel the LCDA and its partners were shortchanging them.
- The villagers were paid RM500 dividend every year. Many have expressed their unhappiness at the quantum.
- Villager Jadam Ekem said they agreed to allow LCDA to develop their NCR land under a JV agreement because they hoped that their community would progress like other communities in the state.
- He claimed that although the agency had paid them RM500,000, the payout was not documented properly and the purpose of the payment not noted.
- They claimed allegations of stealing surfaced when they voiced out their unhappiness.
Since last year the plantation management has reportedly accused the Penans of stealing fruit bunches and selling them off on their own. According to Masing, the situation had become worse since the recent state election on April 16.
Masing(left photo) had reportedly said, last week, that illegal harvesting of oil palm fruits had cost LCD and its JV partners some RM33.6 million in losses.
Worst hit was the 1,855ha plantation belonging to SPB Penan Jambatan Suai Sdn Bhd in Suai, Miri, which has reported RM21.2 million in losses and the IOI Pelita Plantation Sdn Bhd plantation in Tinjar, Baram. The latter lost RM9.8 million.
- Responding to the losses, Masing lashed out at the Penan community, saying: “Stealing is stealing, no matter how you (landowners) try to justify it. You don’t steal from your friend.”
- During a press conference organised by Sarawak Natives Customary Rights Land Network (Tahabas), Ugos said the villagers were willing to meet with Masing over the issue and that he must apologise for calling them thieves.
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