Change We Must

Leaders of six Penan villages in the Apoh, Patah and Tutoh area, angry with the state government for not fulfilling its promise to help them, have refused to meet with their local elected representatives.

“They do not wish to see the MP for Baram Jacob Sagan Dungau and the state assemblyman for Telang, Usan Lihan Jok,” said Jok Jau, coordinator for Sahabat Alam Malaysia in Sarawak.

“They cannot help the Penans with their problems as a result of timber operations in their territorial domain.”

“They (Jacob and Lihan) not only have no authority to speak on behalf of the government, but they are only small men in the Barisan Nasional,” he said.

Lihan had agreed to help solve their problems last year. A five-point pledge was drawn up and signed by the Penan leaders and the government representatives.

Financial aid
One of the points in the agreement was to make an effort at introducing agricultural activities that will be sustainable for the Penan community.

The government also agreed to provide financial allocations for their housing and healthcare needs.

“The Penans are angry with Lihan and the government for failing to implement the agreement,” Jok added.

“They want to see the chief minister Taib Mahmud to discuss their problems which have been made worse by logging activities. It has been going on for almost 30 years.

“Taib is also the Minister of Planning and Resource Management of which the Forest Department is under him. He is the one who signed the timber licence.

“And he alone has the authority to implement the five-point agreement,” said Jok.

Joseph Tawie @ Free Malaysia Today

With the possibility that Chinese Sarawakians, or at least 70% of Chinee Voters would reject SUPP, they are now singing a different tune. If only they had listened and not be subservient to Thief Minister, Abdul Taib, they would not be in such desperate situation.

The Chinese community should stand up and voice their needs, requests and grievances in order to be heard by the government.

Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Patinggi Tan Sri Dr George Chan said this would be more useful and effective than just whining as the government might not be aware of the real problems affecting the people.

“If you do not dare to talk about them how would the government know? The people should be more vocal and speak out loud if they want their needs and grievances to be heard. It will not serve the purpose if they just whine,” said Dr Chan.

Borneopost

The question remains, can they be trusted. We do not think so? Whose interest did they represent in the first place. Not the ordinary chinese Sarawakians.

Certainly not the Dayaks! We just wonder what those Bidayuh and Iban discards from Pesaka wing of PBB is doing in SUPP.

It is high time, they realise SUPP do not actually represent their interest.

To those Bidayuhs and Ibans, they should either join SNAP and Pakatan Rakyat Sarawak or to face the possibility of being rejected in the 10th Sarawak State Election.

As the days draw closer, SUPP is shouting at their top of their voices to be heard by all that they are representing the interest of Chinese “only“.

Quality Concrete Holdings as in Quality Concrete Holdings Bhd, under the stock name QUALITY and stock code: 7544, that is listed on KLSE?

Lee Ling Timber Products Sdn Bhd

Base on the company profile, the company is an investment holding company with activities in six major business segments, none of which is logging. Only one of their subsidiary, Lee Ling Timber Products Sdn Bhd is involved in the timber industry as a manufacturer of timber products and sawmiller.

Have they violated any provisions of KLSE Listing Rules, Company’s Act.

If the timber concession is awarded to Quality Concrete Holdings Sdn Bhd, some one is seriously wrong. How can a timber concession be granted to a company that do not have logging as their principal activity?

We will leave the above questions for now.

A group of villagers have accused the Sarawak forestry department of blatant disregard of their native customary rights (NCR) over their communal forests.

Activists Nicholas Mujah and Numpang Anan Suntai who are helming the group said the department was refusing to suspend the license issued to logging company, Quality Concrete Holding to stop harvesting of timber in their ‘pulau galau’ (communal forest).

“The department has been informed by the land and survey department through a letter that the area is confirmed to be native customary rights land.

“Yet the department does not want to take action against Quality Concrete Holdings, which continues to log trees in the communal forest,” said Mujah, who is the secretary general of Sarawak Dayak Iban Association (Sadia) in a letter of complaint to Suhakam.

“The logging activities have destroyed a large number of our rubber and fruit trees and cash crops,” he said, pointing out that such activities will also disturb their shrines, graveyards and their sources of incomes.

He added that the the logging activities was also polluting the people’s source of drinking water as well as disturbing the habitat of some of the protected animals such as the proboscis monkeys, orang utan, hornbills, deer and peacock.

The area is also the home of some of the rarest species of timber such as belian (iron wood) and selangan batu which fetches up to RM4,000 a tonne.

Five longhouses namely Kampung Entangor, Kg Sungai Ijok, Kg Arus, Kg Tungkah Dayak and Kg Ensika are directly affected by the logging activities.

“All these are clear violations of the rights of the villagers and environmental hazards,” he said, calling on Suhakam to carry out an immediate investigation into the violation of human rights by the forest department and the company.

Longhouse chiefs getting ‘kickbacks’
Meanwhile, Sadia has also received complaints that certain Penghulu and longhouse chiefs had allegedly received ‘kickbacks’ from the company for their cooperation.

“If this is true, then both the company and longhouse chiefs have committed corruption,” he said and urged the resident office of Kota Samarahan to investigate the claim.

His group, he said, would lodge a report with the MACC over the ‘kickbacks’ as well as against the forest department for refusing to suspend the licence it issued to the company.

The trouble between Quality Concrete Holdings and the natives began in April this year when the company received a licence from the forest department.

It allowed them to log timber in 3,305 ha of communal forests in Bukit Salbu, Bukit Birut, Bukit Bederi, Bukit Bekutu, Bukit Ijok and Bukit Sandong.

Despite their protests and blockades, the company and the forest department continue to bulldoze their way to the communal forest.

The licence is expected to expire by the end of the year.

Joseph Tawie @ Free Malaysia Today

The following article is from Bernama. What does it mean? Bernama is closely associated to UMNO and UMNO have said “With or Without Taib, BN will still win in Sarawak”.

I guess when that happens, there is not much love lost, judging from the cold response from Sarawak Barisan Nasional and their component parties, SPDP and PRS, many we incidentally know is quietly hoping that he will step down or lost in the seat he is going to contest in the anticipated 10th Sarawak Election.

Definitely he is no Robin Hood. Hence, A Pirate of A Thief. They are both the same.

Parti Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu (PBB) today expressed its undivided support for Abdul Taib Mahmud to remain as the party president, saying this was necessary to maintain political stability and continuous development in Sarawak.

The support was expressed via a pledge of loyalty and a resolution at the meeting of the PBB supreme council chaired by Taib himself, said PBB deputy president Alfred Jabu.

Jabu said the support was expressed by all the PBB supreme council members and all the leaders of the various segments of the 71 branches of the party.

“We (PBB members) unanimously support the leadership of Abdul Taib Mahmud and will continue to support his leadership and that of Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak,” Jabu, who is a Sarawak deputy chief minister, told reporters this evening.

Taib, who is Sarawak chief minister, left 10 minutes earlier and declined to speak to reporters who had been waiting since morning. He left it to Jabu to attend to the newsmen. – Bernama

Taib Must Go. Tak Nak Taib. Kami Rakyat Sarawak Mau Taib Berundur.

This page is created by caring citizen of Sarawak, Malaysia as a response to Sarawak Chief Minister Tan Sri Taib Mahmud statement on Utusan Borneo (Aug 25, 2010). The state daily closely linked to Taib said:

“Taib had wanted to step down in 2006, but the people ‘rakyat’ of Sarawak want him to stay, so he had no choice but to stay.

Perhaps that is Taib’s perceptions, which obviously not reflecting the growing sentiment of all Sarawakians including those in his own party PBB – that he must go.

Taib Must Go is a grassroots organization for change in Sarawak – the voice of ordinary Sarawakians. It has no affiliation to any political parties Malaysia.

Click here to join Taib Must Go Fanpage

Written by: By TUNKU ABDUL AZIZ

Although I have in my travels seen abject poverty in such diverse places as Addis Ababa, Dhaka, Dar es Salaam, Kolkata, Mumbai and Manila, I must confess to a feeling of utter revulsion and anger when confronted by stark deprivation in our supposedly well-governed and prosperous Malaysia.

Comparison of poverty between Sarawak and Malaya
The pockets of rural poverty in the Malay heartlands of Kedah, Perlis, Kelantan and Terengganu are islands of prosperity compared to the scene that churned my stomach and assailed my sense of guilt and outrage when I first ventured into the Iban long houses on the majestic Rejang.

Little personal dignity left
It is not enough that we have robbed them of their ancestral lands and impoverished them in the process, but we also felt constrained to strip them naked of any residual personal dignity that they might still have by introducing policies that have succeeded in reducing them to the fringes of mainstream economic life.

The Dayak are the forgotten people?
The Orang Asli tribes and the Orang Hulu, the Malays from the interior, have a great deal in common with their Dayak friends. For all we care, they are Malaysia’s forgotten people, but not quite. Whenever an election is underway, be it a by-election or a general election, they find themselves the centre of attention, in great demand by the rich and powerful, all claiming to love and care for them.

The Dayak votes were bought by BN
Before the day is out, they are the proud possessors of a handful of crisp 50 ringgit notes. Four or five hundred ringgit is a princely sum to them, a king’s ransom, no less, in exchange for their votes. If some of them have become cunning, manipulative supplicants and sacrificed their values for a fistful of ringgit, remember it is we who have corrupted them.

They almost lost their value system
Years of exposure to extreme poverty and unbridled exploitation have rendered many of these once proud and noble people, nature’s gentlemen, inured and insensitive to their own traditional values and value systems. They are reduced to living from hand to mouth, on handouts, from day to day.

The Dayak trusted their Government too much
What a tragedy to befall a people whose only sin is to trust those sworn to protect their native rights. They are bewildered to find themselves dispossessed, as their land is taken away without as much as “by your leave” for commercial exploitation by the towkay friends of the powerful.

We who are strong need to help the Dayak
Talking to many of them, the Ibans, I mean, I believe the only way we can restore their pride and dignity is by providing opportunities for regular employment. We are dealing with an ancient people with a distinctive culture. Even those among them whose lives have taken on an urban aspect continue to cling strenuously to their traditional practices. We who are strong have a duty to help the weak by not foisting on the Ibans and others our culture of corruption and other despicable practices.

Corruption in Sarawak is higher then that of Indonesia during election
Some years ago, an Indonesian anti-corruption activist friend of mine visited our country during the 11th general elections, as part of a privately funded election observer mission. His group spent a great deal of time in Sarawak and Sabah and told me that he was shocked by the scale of vote buying.

Election corruption is beyond expectation
I was greatly embarrassed by his revelation because at an anti-corruption conference in The Hague at which I was invited to speak and he was a participant some two months earlier, I had said that while vote buying was rampant in party elections, the practice was unknown in general and state elections.

I was unbelievably naïve to believe the Barisan Nasional government propaganda. The scale of vote-buying must have been so massive as to shock my Indonesian anti-corruption fighter, used as he was to living and working in a corruption-infested nation. It is not that easy to shock an Indonesian over a corruption issue. But unlike Malaysia, Indonesia is on the mend as far as fighting corruption is concerned. In Malaysia, on the contrary, it is in indecently robust health.

Poverty is caused by Government corruption
Malaysia is blessed with rich natural resources and poverty as we have seen in Sabah, Sarawak, Kedah, Perlis, Kelantan and Terengganu can only be explained in terms of governance grounded on corruption and political excesses. When we look at the personal wealth accumulated by Chief Minister Taib of Sarawak at one extremity and the Ibans at the other, one begins to wonder what the future holds for Malaysia. I am not at all sanguine.

The thieving and plundering by the Government must stop
The thieving and plundering by those in power must stop because, as history tells us, it is only a matter of time before the forbearance of the long suffering poor takes on an ugly aspect, with consequences too dreadful to contemplate. The Government of Malaysia and the state governments of Sabah and Sarawak in particular can alleviate poverty by governing in the sole interest of the people. Najib’s people first is under close public scrutiny.

Ultimately, Samling should be severely reprimanded and all their logging concessions rescinded and returned to the people.

Headman Jawa Nyipa (left), Long Ajeng villagers

Malaysian logging giant Samling has threatened the indigenous Penan communities of Sarawak’s Upper Baram region with the suspension of all transport services provided for locals unless they retract sexual abuse and rape allegations against the timber companies active in the region.

The new dispute between Samling and the Penan arose after the release of a report by an international fact-finding mission in July 2010. The report had uncovered seven new cases of sexual exploitation of Penan girls and women in the Upper Baram region by timber workers and had asked the Malaysian government to address the grievances of the Penan communities.

According to Penan sources, Jawa Nyipa, headman of Long Ajeng, was asked by Samling officials to sign a statement that the women in the region had retracted their allegations of sexual abuse by timber company staff.

An Independent Fact-Finding Mission Report by the Penan Support Group, FORUM-ASIA and Asian Indigenous Women's Network (AIWN) . To read report, click imagine to download.

Jawa Nyipa was told that, unless he signed the document, all transport services for the locals would be suspended. The headman refused to sign the statement but the Penan are concerned about the implications of Samling’s threat to suspend transport for the impoverished villagers in the Upper Baram region.

The Penan, who live in remote jungle villages in Borneo, rely on logging companies for transport to rural centres in order to reach the local markets, obtain medical treatment and send their children to secondary school.

Samling’s refusal to provide transport is likely to put them in a very difficult situation as they are unable to afford other means of transport. Last year, logging companies operating in the Middle Baram region ceased to provide transport for a number of communities who had voiced concerns over sexual abuse and rape by timber workers.

Samling (HKEX 3938) is a globally operating Malaysian timber conglomerate with an annual turnover of US$ 480 million.

Last week, the Norwegian Government Pension fund excluded Samling from its portfolio because of the company’s involvement in illegal logging and the fact that it had caused and is still causing severe environmental damage. — BMF

The video recording into Teoh Beng Hock’s inquest on Aug 18 was not uploaded to the Attorney General Chambers website even after more than a week. Since day 1 of TBH’s inquest each and every of the proceedings video are uploaded for public viewing. This particular video was “delayed” (would you believe it) due to technical error, so claimed the AGC.

However, after intense public pressure the video is finally online. This is probably the most ridiculous and hilarious court proceeding in history.

Citizen journalist, Lim Boo Seng, compiled selected “funny” scenes from the more than 3hrs full video recording.

Just watch how Razak “take on” renowned Thai pathologist Dr Pornthip Rojanasunand. Court comedy at its best !!