Re: Malaysia's indigenous people,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
- From: <JH Slime@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2007 09:22:46 +1000
Orang Asli are the Ketuanan Negeri and not the Malays.
"**" <**@.org> wrote in message
news:todqa31fe7sop830uijlvvkgo32ichush1@xxxxxxxxxx
Friday, July 27, 2007
Malaysia's indigenous people
battle to hold ancestral lands
By Elisia Yeo
KAMPUNG CHANG, Malaysia: Just before Semah Ah Yin's great-grandfather Atok
Mawai
died, he asked that his body to be left by a nearby waterfall so it could
to be
carried away by a flood to his next life.
The waterfall and river in northern Perak state, where he performed
ritualistic
ceremonies, became a sacred site for the indigenous Semai people living in
nearby Kampung Chang village.
It marks the boundary of lushly forested ancestral land held by the Semai
for
generations-and which the state government is now eyeing for development.
The battle for the Semai's cherished forests is just one of many cases
being
fought by peninsular Malaysia's indigenous Orang Asli, or Original People,
to
retain control over their traditional lands.
With 18 ethnic subgroups, the Orang Asli number only 150,000 or 0.6
percent of
Malaysia's population of almost 27 million people.
They are among the country's poorest citizens, most making their living
from
agriculture and fishing.
As development pressures in Malaysia increase, Orang Asli are being
squeezed in
land grabs by state governments.
Earlier this year, Kampung Chang villagers fought off a bid by Perak to
use part
of their land for a 200-hectare (494-acre) botanical park, a project they
say
would only line the pockets of contractors and the government.
"Other people will benefit from this park, but not the village people,"
said
Kampung Chang elder Nunek Kamin, 71.
Without warning, bulldozers appeared in February to tear down trees and
make way
for a car park. They cleared a road of red earth before public exposure of
the
project and lobbying by the Semai led to a temporary stand-down.
Crouching by the rushing waters of the waterfall, Semah, 51, said the area
is
still considered sacred because her great-grandfather, a shaman of some
renown
in the area, used to perform ceremonies there.
Rizuan Tempek, 28, a local community activist, said the Orang Asli fear
that
even if the botanical garden development is defeated, something else will
come.
"We're really worried about that," Rizuan said.
Orang Asli can use ancestral land as well as the timber and other
resources on
it. However, state governments say they have legal ownership and insist
they
need not pay compensation for claiming it.
"Orang Asli lands are the cheapest. And of course they are the last
frontier,
the last nice areas around," said Colin Nicholas, coordinator for the
Center
for Orang Asli Concerns, which champions their interests.
Indigenous people have been resettled to make way for highways, buildings,
golf
courses and plantations. State governments give them smaller farming lands
and
houses in return.
The president of the Malaysian Bar Council, Ambiga Sreenevasan, said:
"People
are just walking in and doing what they like" because the Orang Asli do
not have
land titles.
But a growing number of villages are now resorting to legal action in a
bid to
stop encroachment on native customary land.
Thirteen cases are currently being heard by courts in Malaysia or are
being
prepared, said Nicholas, who is helping with them.
In eastern Malaysia on Borneo island, the states of Sarawak and Sabah
recognize
native customary rights but are flouting them, he said, adding that dozens
of
land rights cases are being fought there.
"It's the last resort, because they have protested, they have spoken to
the
authorities, negotiated, dialogued," he said.
In an historic ruling in 2002, a court found that members of the Temuan
tribe
were unlawfully evicted from their ancestral land in central Selangor
state to
make way for a highway to the Kuala Lumpur International Airport.
The court ordered compensation payments but the government and other
parties
have appealed to the Federal Court, the nation's highest.
With its ruling expected later this year, the Federal Court will determine
native land rights once and for all, mirroring similar decisions in
Australia
and Canada, said Cyrus Das, a lawyer who represents the Temuan.
"This is a test case on whether the interests of the Orang Asli over
customary
land is merely a right of usage of the land or if it also includes a
proprietary
interest in the land," said Das.
Land disputes are battles for resources but also an attempt by Orang Asli
to
retain their identities, which are intimately tied to their land, as
Malaysia
tries to integrate them into broader society and argues they must move
with the
times.
"We want the Orang Asli to be part of Malaysia. We don't want them to be a
minority group," said an official from the Department of Orang Asli
Affairs.
But Orang Asli and activists argue the fates of indigenous communities are
being
dictated by the government, while encroachment and resettlement are
threatening
their culture.
Orang Asli say they are not against progress but they want to be
consulted, and
they want sustainable development.
Rizuan, of Kampung Chang, said Orang Asli want to directly benefit from
development and business projects on their land, whose profits are usually
absorbed by middlemen.
Communities also want to be trained to control their own projects such as
palm
oil plantations, he said.
"It's not that we are stupid and can't learn," he said. "We are not
fighting
development. We are just fighting and struggling so that the government
knows
what kind of development we want."
--AFP
.
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