Penan tribe arrested outside government offices in Borneo

16 Sep­tem­ber 2009
The arrest­ed indige­nous peo­ple and activists have been released on bail and charged with ille­gal assem­bly. The group, who num­ber 15 peo­ple, are due to appear in court on 29 Sep­tem­ber. They main­tain that they have com­mit­ted no crime. Sur­vival has writ­ten to the Malaysian gov­ern­ment express­ing its con­cern over the arrests.

-—

16 Sep­tem­ber 2009
The arrest­ed indige­nous peo­ple and activists have been released on bail and charged with ille­gal assem­bly. The group, who num­ber 15 peo­ple, are due to appear in court on 29 Sep­tem­ber. They main­tain that they have com­mit­ted no crime. Sur­vival has writ­ten to the Malaysian gov­ern­ment express­ing its con­cern over the arrests.

-—

At least four­teen peo­ple, includ­ing six mem­bers of the Penan tribe, were arrest­ed in Malaysia today as they tried to voice their oppo­si­tion to hydro­elec­tric dams that will force them off their land.

The group of indige­nous peo­ple and activists were arrest­ed out­side the offices of the Chief Min­is­ter of the state of Sarawak, in the Malaysian part of Bor­neo. They were attempt­ing to hand in a state­ment call­ing on the gov­ern­ment to stop the con­struc­tion of dams that are to flood the land of many Penan and oth­er tribes­peo­ple, destroy­ing their for­est and bur­ial grounds. Over 600 Penan have added their sig­na­tures to the protest.

Ray­mond Abin of the Sarawak Con­ser­va­tion Action Net­work was one of those arrest­ed. Speak­ing from police cus­tody, he told Sur­vival that they had not been allowed to hand in the state­ment, so had wait­ed out­side. After four hours, the Chief Minister’s office called the police and they were arrest­ed. No charges had so far been made against them.

One Penan man told Sur­vival ear­li­er this year, ‘This land is my ances­tral land. It has been used by Penan for ten gen­er­a­tions. We don’t want to move, and we don’t want to give this land to any­one.’ The peo­ple of his vil­lage have been told they must move to make way for the Murum dam, which is already being built by the con­tro­ver­sial Chi­nese state-owned Chi­na Three Gorges Project Cor­po­ra­tion.

Survival’s direc­tor Stephen Cor­ry said today, ‘Sur­vival is extreme­ly con­cerned that the Penan and oth­ers have been arrest­ed for try­ing to voice their con­cerns about these dams which, if com­plet­ed, will dev­as­tate their lives. Instead of lock­ing them up, the Malaysian gov­ern­ment should lis­ten to them.’

In a sep­a­rate devel­op­ment, Malaysian police are report­ed to have dis­man­tled three road block­ades mount­ed in August by twelve Penan com­mu­ni­ties against the log­ging and plan­ta­tion com­pa­nies that are destroy­ing their for­est.

-—

Six mem­bers of the Penan tribe were arrest­ed along with nine oth­er indige­nous peo­ple and activists as they tried to hand in a let­ter voic­ing their con­cerns to the Chief Min­is­ter of Sarawak.

The Penan say in their state­ment:

‘We have not come to Kuch­ing city for plea­sure but full of con­cern, anx­i­ety and tears. We bring the deep pain in the hearts of all the peo­ple of the Penan vil­lages on the Peleiran riv­er because of the heavy con­cerns with how our lives have been since the start of the con­struc­tion of the Murum dam project.

‘If this Murum dam con­tin­ues, the water from the dam will flood our tra­di­tion­al lands includ­ing our vil­lages, prop­er­ties, gar­dens, pad­dy fields and farm­lands, fruit trees, graves etc. The for­est areas and resources that sup­port our lives will be destroyed. We will be forced to move to an area that we do not know and is not com­pat­i­ble with our life con­di­tions.’

Murum is the first in a series of twelve new hydro­elec­tric dams planned for Sarawak. It is being con­struct­ed by the Chi­nese state-owned Chi­na Three Gorges Project Cor­po­ra­tion.

State­ment in full