Sarawak State Election
January 17, 2010 19:31 PM
Sarawak PKR Prepares For State Polls, Names Five Potential Candidates
By: Ramjit
SIBU, Jan 17 (Bernama) — Sarawak Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) is getting itself ready to face the next state election.
Its political bureau chief Baharuddin Mohsen said it had identified initially the potential candidates to contest five rural seats.
“They are all professionals. We want to counter the claim that we do not have the material capable of administering the state should we win,” he said at a function to announce the formation of the party’s Ulu Salim branch here Sunday.
“PKR is ready to shoulder this responsibility. Please give us the chance.
“If we are given the mandate, we will uphold the rule and principles of democracy. We are prepared to be shown the exit by Sarawakians if we fail in the task,” he said.
Baharuddin hinted that state PKR Wanita chief Ibi Uding was among the five potential candidates for the state polls.
Ibi is expected to be fielded in Balai Ringin while Angela Jubing may contest in Engkilili.
The others are Richard Lias (in either Ngemah or Machan), Jemat Panjang (Lambir) and Frankie Bedindang Manjah (either Balleh or Pelagus).
“We may also contest the Dudong seat,” Baharuddin said.
Later when met by reporters, he declined to comment further, saying he would leave it to state PKR chairman Baru Bian to make the final decision.
He also said that PKR would sit down with the leaders of other political parties in Pakatan Rakyat to discuss matters pertaining to the state polls.
– BERNAMA
Sarawak Minister says Penan are good storytellers
In an interview with BBC Radio 4′s flagship Today programme, broadcast on Dec 7, Masing said: “I think this is where we get confused. I think… the Penan are a most interesting group of people and they operate on different social etiquette as us… a lot this sex by consensual sex.”
BBC correspondent Angus Stickler then quoted Mary, a young Penan teenager, as saying that she had been dragged from her room, beaten unconscious and raped, after she had hitched a ride to school on a logging truck.
A federal government task force had confirmed in a report on Sept 9 that girls as young as 10 had been raped by loggers. Like Mary, some have borne children as a result of rape.
Masing, however, told the BBC: “They change their stories, and when they feel like it. That’s why I say Penan are very good storytellers.”
His remark is typical of the Sarawak government response. The official line has been to deny the rape of Penan girls and women by loggers, and to smear the Penan as primitive and promiscuous liars, while declaring that logging is a form of development.
The Sarawak government has asserted that logging brings roads, even if they are poorly maintained, to remote native Dayak communities.
However, the same roads have led to numerous reports of sexual assault on local Dayak, including Penan, girls, by logging company drivers and employees.
Masing’s slur of “changing stories” may be a reference to the police report lodged by a Penan rape survivor, ‘Bibi’, who withdraw her allegation.
But the Penan Support Group (PSG), a civil society coalition, pointed out her alleged rapist, Ah Heng (called ‘Johnny’ in the task force report) had escorted her to make the retraction. It said Ah Heng threatened and intimidated her into changing her story.
The PSG have criticised the police for closing their investigation into the sexual abuse, although the police had a representative in the task force.
The Bruno Manser Foundation (BMF), a NGO based in Switzerland that works for the Penan in Sarawak, has called on Masing to issue an apology.
The BMF had highlighted the sexual abuse of Penan by loggers last year. This sparked ocal media coverage and led eventually to the high-level task force investigation.
Masing’s changing story
Masing is unlikely to comply with any request to apologise. He is a leader of the Dayak-based Parti Rakyat Sarawak (PRS), a splinter group from the Parti Bansa Dayak Sarawak (PBDS).
The PBDS nearly took over the Sarawak government in 1987 from Abdul Taib Mahmud, the most tenacious chief minister in the history of Malaysia.
Masing was PBDS vice-president and a stalwart of the opposition against Taib’s leadership of the state Barisan Nasional (BN) at the time. With a doctorate in anthropology, Masing was one of the most articulate political voices expressing the anger of the majority Dayaks, over the loss of their land to logging and plantation companies.
Following a crushing PBDS defeat in state elections in 1991, the party was broken and returned to the state BN. Masing was instrumental in dismantling the PBDS. He set up the PRS in 2003, claiming to represent Dayak people in the state BN.
Since then, he has been vilified by the Dayak communities fighting for their customary land rights all over Sarawak. The Penan, numbering some 15,000, are one of the ethnic groups included under the Dayak umbrella.
Masing is a highly qualified anthropologist. He understands the false dichotomy between ‘them’ and ‘us’. He has been trained in the cultural sensitivity required of all ethnographers and, as such, should serve as a Dayak spokesman for the Sarawak government.
Instead, he has become a vociferous defender of the Sarawak government’s abysmal record of deprivation of the Dayaks’ native customary rights (NCR) to land. He has transformed into the nemesis of his previous identity as a proponent of Dayak rights.
Sarawak’s political rivalries have thrown up public announcements and graphic descriptions of how its ministers allocate timber licences to family members and friends. They in turn lease the licences to loggers to extract timber. The logging companies – and their benefactors – have grown fabulously rich from their concessions.
Under the Sarawak Land Code 1958, natives are entitled to claim land they have used under customary law or adat. The Federal Court has affirmed the natives’ customary claims in celebrated landmark decisions such as Nor Nyawai vs Borneo Pulp Plantation Sdn Bhd, and Madeli Salleh vs the Government of Sarawak.
Regardless of court decisions, the logging companies, oil palm plantations and hydro-electric dam construction corporations have bulldozed these NCR claims aside. The state government claims all land without title is state land, even if NCR claims are pending.
Frustrated by the failure of the law to protect their communal farms and forests – and with landmark court cases ignored by the executive – Dayak communities have set up many blockades against the logging and oil palm companies.
Yet Masing continues to deny the widespread hardship among rural Dayak. He was disparaging about the Dayaks who fought for their land rights.
“You’re looking at state land. That land belongs to the government,” he told the BBC.
“But you cannot condone people who are squatters who are in areas where they should not be. If it is indeed their land, the law of the land will take care of that.”
KERUAH USIT is a human rights activist – anak Sarawak, bangsa Malaysia. His ‘The Antidote’ column, which appears in Malaysiakini every Wednesday, is an attempt to allow the voices of marginalised people to be heard all over Malaysia.
Penan Rapes did occur
Friday, 11 September 2009 09:49am
©The Star
KUCHING: It has been confirmed that Penan girls and women were raped and molested by timber company workers in Sarawak’s Ulu Baram district.
A special committee, set up by the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry, revealed that sexual abuses against Penan women and girls by timber workers as reported by The Star last year did take place in the Baram district.
The special committee, set up last October to investigate the allegations, documented at least eight cases of rape and molest of Penan women and girls in its report.
The report said one of the victims was raped by a timber worker when she hitched a ride in the company’s vehicle to go to school.
Another was raped twice, in 2005 and 2007, by a man she recognised as a timber worker at a logging camp.
The report also said schoolgirls were often molested by lorry drivers while travelling to school in timber company vehicles.
It documented one incident where a lorry driver groped a 14-year-old girl’s breasts.
In another incident, it said a lorry driver tried to molest a group of 10-year-old girls, but they escaped.
The report concluded that “allegations of sexual abuse against Penan girls and women by outsiders, includ¬ing timber workers, did indeed occur”.
It highlighted the vulnerability of Penan schoolgirls to such abuse because of their dependence on timber vehicles to transport them to and from school.
“Logging tracks are often the only means of access to their villages,” it said, adding that schools and clinics were four to six hours away.
On addressing the sexual abuse, the report called for programmes to raise awareness among the Penans on personal safety, sex educa¬tion and violence against women.
It also recommended the appointment of “trusted” lorry drivers and student management assistants to escort Penan schoolchildren back to their villages.
The report also found that the Penans had little access to registration, healthcare and education due to poverty and the remoteness of their settlements. It said many Penans did not have personal documents while their children had a high drop-out rate at school.
“All these issues are closely related to imbalanced development. The lack of infrastructure such as roads and public transport make it difficult for the Penans to communicate with the outside world, including government agencies.
“The Penans also feel neglected because of negative perceptions and prejudices against them,” it said.
Meanwhile, the Bruno Manser Fund, which first broke the Penans’ allegations of sexual abuse last September, welcomed the release of the special committee’s report.
However, it voiced concern that the report did not have any legal consequences for the perpetrators.
“It is high time that those responsible for the crimes described in the report face the legal consequences of their conduct,” it said in a statement released on the Borneo Project web site.
Latest: Penan rape
International pressure is mounting on Gilles Pélisson, Europe’s leading hotelier, over business ties between Accor, the group of hotels he leads, and Interhill, a Malaysian logging company.
Disquiet over the Accor-Interhill partnership has increased following accusations of sexual abuse, criminal intimidation and environmental degradation in the logging concession operated by Interhill in Baram, Sarawak.
Pélisson, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Accor, one of the largest hospitality groups in the world, jointly commissioned an independent fact-finding mission with Interhill to investigate these allegations.
Forestry Consultant Hugh Blackett conducted the mission and released his report on Sept 10.
The Blackett report details alarming social and environmental threats to the communities of Baram, and to the forests these communities call home.
Accor and Interhill are partners in a 23-floor five-star Pullman hotel project in Kuching, Sarawak’s capital.
Accor operates over 4,000 hotels in 90 countries, including the Pullman, Novotel, Mercure, Ibis and Sofitel chains.
Accor says its hotels champion social and environmental responsibility. Accor hotels run a A Plant for the Planet tree-planting campaign, in partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme.
Logging ‘not sustainable’
The hotel and adjoining shopping centre built by Interhill was announced in 2005 as a Novotel. It now appears to be slated to be run as a Pullman hotel, the second in Malaysia after Putrajaya.
Interhill’s core business is logging, but it has diversified into construction. The company, registered in Miri, Sarawak, has come under fire by its own fact-finding mission. Logging in Interhill’s concession was found to be “definitely not sustainable”.
“The future of the forest is already threatened,” the report warned.
The mission found that the area under the timber licence Interhill is operating, T/9089, had already been logged by another company from 1989 to 2000.
Interhill began logging the concession area in 2002. According to the report, “responsible logging” in the mountainous terrain would be extremely difficult.
“The Sarawak government permits logging in such areas and it also permits short cycle re-entry.
With much of the area having already been logged twice in ten years the forest is inevitably suffering degradation.
“This is clearly indicated by the reduction in harvested volumes from 2.2 million cubic metres by the previous logging contractor during the 1990s at an average of 60 cubic metres per hectare to the estimated 940,000 cubic meters that will eventually be harvested by Interhill at a rate of 20 cubic metres per hectare,” the report pointed out.
Interhill did not comply, as required by Malaysian law, with the National Resources and Environment Board’s Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Report Approval for the timber licence T/9089.
According to the report, “field observation indicated that full compliance was not being achieved and in some cases compliance was minimal or absent.”
The EIA concerned has not been made public, despite repeated calls from civil society for greater transparency.
Interhill is the contractor for timber licence T/9089. The licence is owned by a company called Damai Cove Resorts Sdn Bhd, closely linked to the Sarawak Government.
‘Married’ after rape claim
Logging has also brought Interhill workers into contact with local indigenous tribes, including the Penan.
The report of the National Task Force to Investigate Allegations of Sexual Abuse of Penan Women in Sarawak, released on Sept 8 this year by the Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development, described accounts of an Interhill worker having raped a Penan girl at least twice, causing her to bear two children.
Interhill claims the logging camp worker and the alleged rape victim are “now living in a married state” but has no documentary proof of this.
According to the ministerial task force report, the Penan woman, known by the pseudonym ‘Bibi’, had been raped after refusing the advances of the Interhill employee, known as ‘Johnny’ or Ah Heng, because he already had two wives.
‘Bibi’ made the report in a Women’s Aid Organisation (WAO) safe house in Petaling Jaya a year ago. Despite lodging a police report at Bukit Aman in Kuala Lumpur, no police action was taken against her alleged assailant.
Local indigenous rights Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) activists claim Ah Heng intimidated the victim after she returned to Baram from the WAO safe house in Peninsular Malaysia, and forced her to deny that she had been raped.
The Blackett mission, conducted between June 21 and Jul 2 this year, made no mention of the findings of the ministerial report. The Ministry had in fact, released its findings two days before the Blackett report was published.
“No conclusion is drawn on the allegation of sexual harassment as the joint investigation by the police and NGOs is pending,” the Blackett report stated. The police have now announced they will not support a joint police-NGO mission.
Communal land rights
In April this year, 77 Penan leaders, including 25 village chiefs from all over Baram, sent a letter to Pélisson, protesting against the partnership between Accor and Interhill.
The leaders said “Interhill is extracting timber from our forest against our declared will and without our consent. Interhill does not respect our boundaries, continues to encroach on our land and disregards our native customary rights. Many of us are affected by severe health problems caused by logging and have suffered because we have lost our fishing grounds and hunting has become much more difficult.”
The Accor-Interhill report noted that the Sarawak Land Code 1958 recognises Native Customary Rights (NCR) to land. The report quotes Interhill’s timber licence T/9089 as stating that “it is the licensee’s responsibility to acquaint himself with the boundaries of any such lands falling within his licence area“.
Therefore, it is Interhill’s responsibility to ask local communities where logging may be allowed, before starting work.
However, Blackett could not verify any agreements negotiated between Interhill and local communities. Interhill was unable to provide adequate objective documentation of compensation payments.
“Communities visited said that Interhill’s logging operations encroached areas that they consider to be theirs and that neither operations nor compensation were in compliance with agreements as understood by the Penan,@” the report pointed out.
There were “obvious contradictions” between the Penan testimonies and Interhill’s claims that they had paid compensation to local communities.
Intimidation by ‘gangsters’
According to the report, Penan victims allegedly raped by logging workers say they “have been threatened with violence by gangsters if they give damaging testimony”.
These claims echoed those publicised by the Bruno Manser Fund (BMF), an NGO based in Switzerland that supports the Penan. The BMF has been running a campaign against Accor’s business links with Interhill.
The Blackett report said “the Penans claim they are badly treated by some Interhill workers and are frequently threatened that they will be attacked by gangsters if they try to oppose the company”.
Penan communities said that they had not reported the threats because the police would not listen to them.
The report described a collision on June 21 this year, between an Interhill vehicle and a local motorcyclist from Long Item.
As a result, the local villager was “badly hurt”, and his motorcycle was wrecked. The Interhill employee took the villager to the nearest clinic. But he warned the villager not to implicate the Interhill employees in the incident, or else the villager “would be visited by gangsters”.
The report concluded, “if the accusations are true, some of Interhill’s employees clearly do the company no credit”.
Following a request for comments from Malaysiakini, Accor replied, “The report written by Mr. Hugh Blackett was commissioned by Interhill and Accor jointly. This document is a major step towards transparency and Accor can be satisfied that it has put no issues aside”.
“It is our understanding that BMF’s call for Accor to terminate the partnership has evolved into a call to improve the situation on the ground. This is something Accor is working on with its partner,” said Evan Lewis, Vice President (Communications), Asia Pacific.
Interhill has not disputed the findings of the Blackett Report. An Interhill statement said it “respects the findings of the Mission and the contents of the Report” but called for “better context and greater understanding”.
BN pimpinan Najib Razak tak de idea kreatif positif…selalu suka mengelirukan rakyat
October 8, 2009
Pakatan Rakyat Malaysia in Sarawak – You must be joking!
By Sim Kwang Yang
So Gabriel Adit and some other like-minded people are going to form a new party called Pakatan Rakyat Malaysia (PRM) in Sarawak. Dr. John Brian Anthony even claimed on his blog Dayak Baru that the new party had been registered with the Registrar of Societies a few days ago.
I know Gabriel personally. A long time ago, I used to drink in the same pub in Kuching with him, sometimes every afternoon. It is hard for me to bad-mouth him, though Internet commentators are beginning to bad-mouth him already.
Some fair comments on this latest development are still apt and possible.
First of all, it is very difficult to form a new political party in Malaysia, and Sarawak is no exception.
Years ago, I was hired to make an application to register a new political party in Sarawak. I did all the paper work, and was invited to meet the then Deputy Home Minister, at the time when Dr. M was the Home Minister in charge of the Registrar of Societies.
The Deputy Minister told me that only the PM had the power to approve application for the registration of new political parties and new newspapers, so I had to wait. Soon, word reached me that the PM Dr. M had rejected the application submitted by me, because of the objection of the Sarawak CM Taib Mahmud.
I wonder if they do things differently nowadays, but I doubt it. For a new political party to be formed in Sarawak, the PM surely has to be consulted, and in the true spirit of mutual back-scratching in the Barisan Nasional, the PM would surely consult the Sarawak CM.
Therefore, for the new PRM to be registered, surely its registration would have received the blessing of the CM Taib Mahmud – for obvious reasons.
Too many instant politicians
Am I unhappy with Gabriel Adit for leaving PKR for the new PRM? Not one bit! In fact, when he joined PKR amidst much fanfare last year, I was worried for the PKR. He has too much political and financial baggage, and he could become a huge liability for the Sarawak PKR. Now that he has decided to leave PKR and go form the PRM, PKR is one toxic asset less.
That is why I disagree with Anwar Ibrahim’s method of recruiting instant politicians who had been with the BN. Their political baggage is simply too tainted for comfort. It is far better to recruit new people, young and old, from the untainted masses of middle class Sarawakians, like the retired police or army officers, former civil servants, and even new graduates.
Apart from the opposition DAP, PKR, and PAS, political parties in Sarawak depend on very strong financial backers to survive. There is the huge cost needed in running a party structure, to pay administrative personnel and the office rental, and to fund the election war chest.
In the old days, party funding was one of the main fuses that caused the SNAP to split up in two. Party funding also became a contentious issue with PBDS, to the extent that you could say money is the cause of all political evil in Sarawak.
Who is bank-rolling PRM?
The question is: who is funding this new PRM party?
There is widespread speculation that Tiong King Sing is the money man behind the new party. He has not denied it or sued anybody for saying so. He could very well be. He is already bank-rolling the SPDP, and with his immense wealth, even after his money in Kuala Dimensi has been frozen by the police, he can easily support another party. It is just a matter of mere millions to him – just like a few dollars to you and me.
Still others have speculated that the financial backer could be Sng Chee Hua, looking for a party for his son Larry.
The launch of this new party in Sarawak is good news for those over-the-hill politicians who are trying to make a comeback one way or another. They have also smelled the money.
They do not have to go and work on the ground with the rakyat during non-election time. All they have to do is to wait for a general election to come, and hope that election funds in huge bundles will fall from the sky. Then, they have a shot at being YBs and become rich. Believe me! I have met my fair share of these professional political money-makers.
Prospects for Sarawak elections
Will this new political party bring anything good to the people of Sarawak?
I doubt it. There are more than enough political parties in the Land of the Hornbill. One more Dayak-led party is going to detract from Dayak support for the PKR, and help PBB in the divide-and-rule tactic to weaken the Dayaks’ political strength.
When I was in Kuching recently, I was asked by a reporter what I think of the next general election, at both the federal and state levels.
Frankly, I don’t see how the Pakatan Rakyat can take the state government in Sarawak next round, certainly not with DAP, PKR, and PAS squabbling over seat allocations, and definitely not with Taib Mahmud still firmly at the BN helm. They would find it hard even to recruit all the 71 willing, capable, and credible candidates for all the state seats.
It is better for them to concentrate on grabbing 10 parliamentary seats in both Sabah and Sarawak to tip the scale in Kuala Lumpur, and even that seems impossible now.
As for the new party PRM, there is no need to get excited about this latest kid on the block. The kid will probably fizzle out after the next round of general elections, like the STAR party.
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Other News:
“The condition does not apply to political parties as they enjoy a national status. Only state-level organisation aspiring to become a national entity needs to have seven members from the states,” he said when contacted by Bernama.
He was commenting on a call by the Election Commission (EC) that opposition parties register Pakatan Rakyat as a legal entity like Barisan Nasional to enable them to campaign as a coalition and put up their parties’ flags.
Md Alias brushed aside a claim by the opposition that ROS’ conditions were rigid and as such it was difficult to formalise the alliance.
“There are normal conditions, which should be adhered to, such as they must have a constitution like that of BN.
“This is not a big issue and until today, we have not received any applications from them,” he said.
The opposition is made up of PKR, DAP and PAS.
- Bernama
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