Malaysia's Sarawak embroiled in land disputet
Malaysia's Sarawak embroiled in land disputet
By Patrick Chalmers
KUCHING, Malaysia (Reuters): Court cases, sporadic protests
and even killings over indigenous land rights issues are
destroying the calm of Sarawak state in Kalimantan.
Traditionally placid Ibans, Penans and other groups used to
obeying their longhouse headmen and the authorities, are bridling
at logging and plantation activity on land they say is ancestral.
Local campaigners point to a High Court victory indigenous
groups won in May as a spur to dozens of others with suits
against companies and the state, promising more legal battles
whatever the case's outcome on appeal.
Justice Ian Chin not only barred a pulp company access to part
of a land concession, but also widened definitions of native
ancestral land in a ruling campaigners said was a "significant
precedent" for native land rights in Malaysia.
Yet growing conflicts over land, sparked by the authorities'
policy of exploiting Sarawak's natural resources, are unlikely to
affect the state government's grip on power in upcoming local
polls.
Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud, whose time at the top
matches Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's 20 years,
believes the parties of his Barisan Nasional (National Front)
will do "quite well" in state elections due before November ends.
With incumbents in 58 of the 62 state assembly seats up for
grabs, he's probably right not to be worried.
Exploitation of the rich mineral, agricultural and rainforest
resources has helped lift state per capita gross national product
from 1980's 2,665 ringgit (US$701) to 2000's estimated 6,235
ringgit at constant prices.
Even in one of the poorer native communities downstream from
the controversial Bakun dam site, the headman's home is equipped
with stereo, TV and video powered for a few hours each night by
an on-site generator.
But the basics appear neglected, with poor sanitation, and
ablutions performed at the end of a rain-fed tap.
Surrounded by the marble pillars, chandeliers and gilded
period furniture in his office, Taib, who succeeded his uncle as
chief minister in 1981, said voters endorse his ideas.
"People feel it is prosperous and they feel that we ought to
continue this policy," the 65-year-old Taib told Reuters during
an interview in state capital Kuching.
The small city stands where English adventurer James Brooke
put to shore in 1839, quelling local rebels to win favor with the
Sultan of Brunei.
His appointment as Sarawak's first white rajah began the reign
of three Brookes, a line ending in 1941 with violent Japanese
occupation in World War II and eventual independence within
Malaysia in 1963 along with Malaya, Sabah and Singapore.
The throwing off of colonial control prompted a concerted
development push in Sarawak, where the rajahs' classic
divide-and-rule policy had previously left territories of many
native groups intact to avoid confrontation.
Development since independence, while welcomed, has prompted
disputes over who really owns the soil, reflected by 1999's
killing of four land clearing contractors near Niah in the north
eastern coastal part of the state.
Few people in Sarawak now seriously resist the tug of the 21st
century. It is more a question of how fast they abandon old ways
of jungle farming, fishing and hunting for the cash economy.
But many are unhappy at the division of state spoils, angry at
laws they say sequester ancestral lands mainly to benefit well-
connected oil palm planters, rainforest loggers and politicians.
"It was one of the hot propaganda (issues) introduced by the
opposition at the last parliamentary elections but it was not
based on fact," says Taib.
"It was more on manipulating perceptions," he added.
Others want money for the $2.4 billion 2,400 MW Bakun hydro
project to go instead for schools, hospitals and roads. They say
by the time it is completed in 2005, it will generate far more
power than local demand can use.
The same goes for nearly $1 billion lavished on wafer foundry
1st Silicon, Sarawak's bid for tech hub status, which sparkles in
pristine isolation on cleared former swamp land near Kuching.
"Of course, our people do not say we don't want development,"
says Raymond Abin of the Borneo Resources Institute, a local
campaigner who may contest the election as an independent.
"In the first place, there must be genuine consultation with
the people in the longhouses," he says. Longhouses are the
traditional homes and meeting places for indigenous groups in
parts of Borneo island.
Such thinking is common and key, particularly in national
polls, as votes in Malaysia's largest state decide nearly 15
percent of parliament's 193 seats despite a population of less
than a tenth of the country's 22 million citizens.
Whether it translates into dissident support in state polls,
or national ones due by the end of 2004, is another thing.
Taib delivered 28 seats in 1999 towards the coveted two thirds
parliamentary majority won by Mahathir's ruling coalition.
A rag tag, ill-funded opposition boasts a couple of state
seats held by independents and two for the Peninsular-based,
ethnic Chinese Democratic Action Party (DAP).
Parti Keadilan Nasional (National Justice Party), led by
supporters of jailed former finance minister Anwar Ibrahim, plans
a state election debut fighting more than half the seats.
The conservative Parti Islam se-Malaysia, taking sizable
chunks of Mahathir's support among Peninsular Malays, holds
little appeal for Sarawak's myriad Iban, Chinese, Melanau and
native groups like the Penans of the interior.
Local journalists in the state's tightly controlled media see
scant prospect of more than a handful of opposition gains.
Whichever way people vote the grievances over land rights look
like festering for a long time.
Ahmad Awang Ali, a 40-year-old Malay farming ground earmarked
for a plantation, only half jokes in his comparison of Japanese
army occupiers with Sarawak's own leaders.
"They chopped off people's heads but they didn't take the
land. Our people, they're not fighting for people's rights."