Bullying tactics drive Penan to abandon dam blockade

The abandoned Long Singu longhouse last week after the government rushed through the Penan's move to the unfinished relocation site. 9th Dec Mem­bers of the

The abandoned Long Singu longhouse last week after the government rushed through the Penan's move to the unfinished relocation site. 9th Dec Mem­bers of the Penan tribe from the Malaysian state of Sarawak have bowed to over­whelm­ing pres­sure and aban­doned their 77-day protest against the Murum dam.

Faced with ris­ing waters approach­ing their vil­lages, lack of food at the protest site and the announce­ment that the bridges that led to their vil­lages were going to be dis­man­tled, the Penan felt they had no choice but to halt their block­ade and accept the move to a new gov­ern­ment reset­tle­ment site.

When asked why they had agreed to move one Penan man said, ‘ The water is already very close to our vil­lage. It’s very high’. A local activist told Sur­vival, ‘They went with a very heavy heart, they are not hap­py’.

As part of the agree­ment the Penan were promised a fur­ther RM8000 (approx­i­mate­ly US$2,500) com­pen­sa­tion, tak­ing the total com­pen­sa­tion per fam­i­ly to just over US$7,000. How­ev­er, their oth­er demands includ­ing, cru­cial­ly, the need for more land for plant­i­ng and for­est for hunt­ing and gath­er­ing, have been ignored.

The Penan rely on hunting and gathering in their forests to survive.

The for­est is cru­cial for the Penan. Even the government’s own stud­ies showed that the Murum Penan rely on the for­est for 75% of their sus­te­nance. With­out more for­est it’s hard to see how the Penan will sur­vive in the relo­ca­tion site.

Despite being pres­sured to move, the build­ing of the new site is not yet fin­ished. Two of the long­hous­es are still being worked on. Water sup­plies have not been con­nect­ed; the promised school and clin­ic have not been built and the road con­nect­ing the vil­lages is not com­plet­ed.

The impound­ment (flood­ing) of the dam before all the affect­ed fam­i­lies had agreed to move has caused world­wide out­rage. Despite promis­es from the Sarawak gov­ern­ment that the relo­ca­tion process would meet inter­na­tion­al stan­dards the Penan were not prop­er­ly con­sult­ed and the relo­ca­tion process was shroud­ed in secre­cy.

Sur­vival was told, ‘Peo­ple believed that it would be dif­fer­ent this time, but it has shown to be lies. The gov­ern­ment nev­er took their demands into con­sid­er­a­tion’.

The lawyer act­ing for the Penan has promised that despite this move the Penan will still protest and will con­tin­ue to push for jus­tice in the courts.