The Penans want to be left alone in the jungle. The government says doing so would mean sidelining them from mainstream development. Timber companies want to log the forest in the name of commercial profit. The government wants the tribe’s ancestral land to build hydroelectricity dams to power the state’s development need.

But the Penans want to stay in these jungle, where they can live in “luxury.” Resettling them would impoverish them.

What is then the sensible way forward for the this last nomadic tribe of Borneo? Should the Sarawak government allocate them forest to live for those who want to remain in the jungle and bring to the mainstream those who want get out of the jungle?

[UPDATE: Translation in progress. The free time I thought I had earlier in the day dissipated towards the afternoon. Should be able to translate part of the report before the week is over]

An official report on the rape of Penan girls and women in the interior of Sarawak has been published. Compiled by the Ministry of Women, Community and Family Development , the report confirms that rape and sexual abuse had indeed taken place.

The report on the rape of Penan girls is now available online, in pdf format, here. It is in the Malay language.

Borneo Blog will try to translate the 111-page report to English. Hopefully, I will be able to do it by today.

The sister-in-law of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, film-maker Clare Rewcastle, has been documenting the lives of the Penan people in the Malaysian Borneo state Sarawak.

Penan... AP Picture

Rewcastle, who is married to Andrew Brown, younger brother of Gordon, has been coming to Borneo since a couple of years ago and secretly filming companies destroying the rainforest fo make way for oil palm plantation.

Rewcastle said the Penan, the last nomadic tribe of Borneo, was desperate “to smuggle out news of their plight”.

“So in the end, they bundled us under some bin bags, secreted us upstream in the bottom of a shaky old longboat and then led us into the jungle to a hidden-away old hunting hut. It became our home for the next three days, during which time at least 50-60 men, women and children came to meet us, many arriving at night to avoid detection.”

A group of hunters and gatherers from the semi-nomadic Penan tribe of Borneo rescued two surveyors who went missing since five days ago deep in the jungle of the Malaysian state of Sarawak.

The two were part of about 50 surveyors who were drawing up land route between two Malaysian Borneo states, Sabah and Sarawak, for a 500km gas pipeline.

Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi had confirmed that the RM3 billion (USD840 million) gas pipeline project by Petronas Carigali, a subsidiary of Petronas, Malaysia’s petroleum corporation, would go on.

[Penan tribe. A 1999 photo by AP]

The Penans, said The Star, who were out hunting and collecting jungle produce, found Ismail Salleh, 31, and Rano Sani, 26, at 3pm yesterday, as a plane and helicopter searched from the air and 15 rescue personnel combed the thick jungles of Baram.

“The Penans had taken them to a location where the search and rescue parties could meet them and take them out to the nearest accessible settlement.

“How the duo got lost is still a puzzle. We (police) will interview them soon, but the good news is that they are not hurt,” said Baram district police chief Deputy Supt Jonathan Jalin.

When I was small, growing up in the interior of Kota Marudu in the northern part of Sabah, I used to hear stories about timber camp workers and the infamy of their behaviour towards the locals, particularly towards young girls.

Angry young boy

I remember feeling angry, as a small boy, when I heard stories of how timber camp workers were disturbing girls in my area and wished that I was a grown up man so that I could challenge these menacing men in a fistfight.

Standing up to abuse

I also remember how proud I was to see grown up men in my village stood up to their infamy.

At one stage, several men in my village cornered a timber camp worker, whom I suspected to be illegal immigrant, who dared stalking a girl who was on her way back from the market, and scared him shit that he pleaded for mercy for hours and repeatedly promised he would never show his face again in the village.

Tail between the legs

Imagine how satisfied I felt when seeing him — tall, fit, and with bulging muscle — all pale and pleading for his life.

The men, all of whom were my relative, could have finished him off and bury him there and then or throw him into the buffalo muck without anyone knowing. But we were no animal. We let him go and heard no more of him.

This childhood memory came back to haunt me when I saw a report about timber camp workers in Sarawak have been sexually-abusing Penan women and girls.

Sort out the timber mess

Police say they will investigate but they have not yet received any report on the matter.

Now Suhakam, the Malaysian Human Rights Commission will also look into the matter.

According to a report in The Star, Sarawak Human Rights Commissioner Dr Mohd Hirman Ritom had described the allegation as “very serious.”

“We must establish the truth. These allegations are very serious in nature, especially if they involved natives who are isolated and defenceless.

“They are allegations of a criminal nature, not just a violation of human rights. We will have to visit those areas where such alleged crimes took place and speak to the people in those areas,” he said.

The authorities should really get down to this issue and stop the menace once and for all.

Why are the forests still being plundered anyway?

And another thing, why are the forests still being plundered? Can’t the Sarawak government do any better than resorting to damaging the forest?

The same goes to Sabah. Why are the forest still being plundered? Can’t the Sabah government do any better?

The following is a press release from Survival, a movement for the tribal peoples, on the alleged sexual abuse of Penan women and girls in Sarawak.

I’m not sure if this is true but if it is, the authority should not close their eyes on this. The issue first reported by the Swiss-based Bruno Manser Fund.

Penan women accuse loggers of sexual abuse
25 September 2008

Women from the Penan tribe have accused workers from two Malaysian logging companies of harassing and raping Penan women, including schoolgirls.

‘I want to make it known that we are being sexually abused by the timber company workers on a regular basis’, one woman said.

The Penan live in Sarawak, in the Malaysian part of the island of Borneo. They have spent more than twenty years trying to stop logging companies destroying their forests. The accused loggers work for Samling and Interhill, two of the major companies operating on Penan land.

According to research undertaken by the organisation Bruno Manser Fund, the perpetrators frequent several Penan settlements in the Middle Baram area, looking for women. The company workers are based in logging camps in the region and are usually drunk when they arrive at the villages.

‘When we hear their off-road vehicles coming, we just leave everything as it is and flee into the forest,’ the Penan source said. ‘They come on an almost weekly basis, but the situation is worst during the school holidays when they know the students are in the villages.’

In other cases, school runs operated by logging company vehicles had been arranged so that schoolgirls had to stay overnight at a logging camp, where they were abused.

The Penan communities are reporting several cases of pregnancy as a consequence of abuse by company workers. They also accuse the loggers of using armed ‘gangsters’ to intimidate them and of handing out alcohol to young Penan. Complaints by the Penan to those in charge of the logging camps and to the police have so far had no effect.

The Bruno Manser Fund has asked the Malaysian government to start a formal enquiry into the allegations. In particular, the government is being asked to ensure that the victims are protected and that the harassment of Penan women by company workers is brought to an end immediately.

In a separate development, the Sarawak government recently announced that it would no longer recognise elected Penan leaders in some communities. The move is seen as an attempt to break resistance to logging. [Source]

When I was in primary school — or was it in Form One or Form Two? — I had learned from a geography lesson that Ghana was the world’s biggest cocoa producer. I said, “Wow”.

I had wanted to visit Ghana ever since because, according to villagers in Tandek, my birthplace in the northern part of Sabah, I could reach Gana in three days of trekking through the jungle.

It was only years later that I realised that Kampung Gana and Ghana were two different places. And it was not until 2004 that I finally managed to set foot in Kampung Gana, which is now a resettlement scheme for several hundreds hill tribe families.

Here is my story from that visit. Too bad I’ve lost all the pictures from that trip when the hard disk on my old computer conked out.

Kampung Gana – A Real-Life Strategy Game To Eradicate Poverty

KOTA MARUDU: “Sejak aku berkelana, tiada yang tahu, apa yang ku cari” (Ever since I’ve been wandering, I know not still, what is it that I am looking for), so goes the lyric of a dangdut song that wafts through the planks of a small wooden house in Kampung Gana, a remote resettlement scheme here.

The song by Indonesian dangdut singer Rhoma Irama grew louder as I approached the house on the southern edge of the scheme.

Closer inspection revealed that a portion of the house — the living room if it can be called one — has been turned into a sundry shop where a diminutive woman of 35 sells some basic goods. A crate of carbonated drinks lies half empty on the rack.

“People like to listen to this song. It suits the surrounding,” said the owner, Rondiwul Sogulai, who hails from Kampung Sonsogon Paliu, about two days walk from Kampung Gana.

She started the shop in 1999, two years after she moved into the scheme. “It is not so profitable but that’s all right as long as I don’t suffer losses,” she said.

Relocated after much persuasion

Like the 200 other families, who are either among the state’s poor or hardcore poor, she was relocated to Kampung Gana after much persuasion.

She had lived deep in the jungle in the northern part of the Crocker Range where the people used to wander the woods to hunt or gather its produce for daily subsistence.

Hundreds of others, who are still skeptical of what the scheme can do to change their life, are staying put in the jungle and continue to live in dispersed hinterland locations.

Those who did move had found a permanent home and wander the jungle no more but have they found what they were looking for?

Life almost the same

“Life is the same as far as I am concerned, only slightly better for the children because they can now go to school,” Rondiwul said.

She cannot read much for she has never been to one.

But she did manage to learn about money, the basic principle of buying in bulk at a certain price and selling at a friction higher, and of simple profit and loss calculation.

Strategy game

Those who are familiar with computer games will probably see how close this settlement comes to resembling an “empire-building” strategy game where a player needs to introduce an array of elements into a scenario to move a civilisation.

Among these elements are the creation of farms to feed the community, learning centres to enhance knowledge, marketplace, access roads for trade caravans to ply — all of which result in increasing their ability to utilise the resources around them.

These basic elements are already in place in Kampung Gana but they are still in bad shape, to say the least.

Coordinator of the Gana community forestry project Naan Ibrahim, 52, said that at the moment the economic activities among the villagers are still in the early trial-and-error stage.

“They plant some tapioca, corn and hill padi but only on a small scale…these are for subsistence only. They hardly have surplus to sell,” he said.

The 200 families who have so far agreed to move into the scheme are also constantly at the mercy of the weather.

“Rain is good for us because it gives us the water supply and waters our plants but it can also cut road links because rivers would become swollen and the road muddy and slippery,” Naan said.

Those who drive to Kampung Gana have to cross rivers, which is only possible during the dry season.

But this resolute man refuses to give in to the difficulties he faces in the scheme.

The guy from Tambunan who asked to be transferred back

“Actually, I was transferred from this village to my hometown in Tambunan in 2000 but two years later, I asked to be transferred back to Kampung Gana…I could not abandon these people, not when things are still in the process of settling down,” he said.

To enliven the spirit of the people, he has started a small orchard and hill padi plot at the front and back of his house “if only to show that there are things that we can do on our own to make life better”.

Ray of hope

The primary school, Sekolah Kebangsaan (SK) Gana, which has 245 pupils, is good though and looks similar to other primary schools near towns.

SK Gana headmaster Junick Umboh said the school started taking in pupils in 1999.

“At first there were problems because some of these pupils started their Year 1 at high age, say 10 years old. So after learning the basics, we quickly moved them to higher classes according to their age but they had trouble catching up with their studies,” he said.

But they were in high spirit to go on schooling and this, coupled with dedication from the teachers, might just be Kampung Gana’s best hope yet for the future, he said.

Still a lot needs to be done

On the scheme, he said there was still much that the government could do to make it a success.

“First, you have to facilitate easy movement of people by building good access roads which are passable irrespective of the weather. Then bring in telecommunication facilities so that you can communicate with the outside world,” he said.

In a way, the authorities in Sabah are playing a strategy game, a real-life one at that, with the ultimate aim of freeing the people from of the clutches of poverty.

Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department and Kota Marudu member of parliament Datuk Dr Maximus Ongkili, who visited the scheme recently, admitted that much still needed to be done there.

“We will ensure that what we have planned for this scheme will see a successful implementation,” he said.

Survey works for padi plots for each of the families had now been completed and so did the survey on the Kampung Talantang-Gana road, Ongkili said.

There was also a proposal to plant rubber and to turn Kampung Gana into the state’s main producer of organic vegetable.

“The Agriculture Department has conducted trials and found that this place is suitable to produce organic vegetables…plant anything and it will grow,” he said.

This resettlement scheme will be a test of the government’s determination to wipe out hardcore poverty — those with a household income of RM300 or less a month — by the year 2010.

In the meantime, residents like Rondiwul will have to make the best of whatever is available.

[This article was published in Bernama and several local newspapers in May 2004)

On the contrary, the migration had taken place the other way around, according to the findings of a research team led by the University of Leeds.

The University of Leeds says the research has discovered genetic evidence “that overturns existing theories about human migration into Island Southeast Asia (covering the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysian Borneo) — and takes the timeline back by nearly 10,000 years.”

Prevailing theory suggests that the present-day populations of Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) originate largely from a Neolithic expansion from Taiwan driven by rice agriculture about 4,000 years ago — the so-called “Out of Taiwan” model.

“However, an international research team, led by the UK’s first Professor of Archaeogenetics, Prof Martin Richards, has shown that a substantial fraction of their mitochondrial DNA lineages (inherited down the female line of descent), have been evolving within ISEA for a much longer period, possibly since modern humans arrived some 50,000 years ago,” the university said in a statement.

Prof Richards said: “I think the study results are going to be a big surprise for many archaeologists and linguists on whose studies conventional migration theories are based.”

“These population expansions had nothing to do with agriculture, but were most likely to have been driven by climate change — in particular, global warming and the resulting sea-level rises at the end of the Ice Age between 15,000-7,000 years ago.” [Source]

I’m from the Kimaragang indigenous community in Sabah, a small tribe of not more than 10,000 of Sabah’s 2.5 million population.

Found mostly in areas around Tandek, we are now losing one of our greatest assets which make us Kimaragang, Kimaragang — our language.

I guess by now half of the little population have already embraced the Kimaragangised Malay as their official language.

Sabah is one place in the world — perhaps the only place in the world, come to think of it — where one can find a huge number of ethnic groups in one state. Some say it’s 32, but the number could reach up to 40 ethnic groups.

The state government now wants to undertake a study to find out the exact number.

State Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister Masidi Manjum said the number of ethnic communities had been put at 28, 32 and 33 in the past, reports The Star newspaper today.