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Extracted from
Malaysiakini.com
Anwar: Dayaks lead lives of quiet desperation
Terence
Netto
Apr 20,
PKR advisor Anwar Ibrahim described the arrests of Iban landowners
for alleged arson in the interior of
The arrests of land rights activist Jacob Emang, Ziglar anak
Kasau, Edward Ungga and Gerah ak Gugat in the Sri Aman
division on April 17 followed police reports by a logging company that their
mobile camps in Silantek had been torched. The four have been remanded until
April 23.
Anwar
described Dayaks in the interior of
"Hence
we in Semenanjung (peninsula) have little empathy for the plight of the Dayaks
in the
Anwar said the amendments to the land code in
Land
the 'last bastion'
He said state government assurances that NCR land was not being threatened and
that putting such land to economic use via logging and plantation agriculture
did little to assuage Dayak fears of disinheritance.
He described Dayak ties to NCR land as "mystic" and thus
impervious to the market savvy calculations of planners for whom rising
commodity prices made the sight of idle or poorly cultivated land a travesty of
economics.
He said sources had told him that the four who were arrested owned NCR land in
Abok in Sri Aman and that the logging company with a permit to extract timber
had encroached on durian planted land belonging to the arrested NCR owners. The
encroachment was by way of a path carved by the company enroute to the timber
concession.
Anwar said the Dayaks' meagre educational opportunities, low skilled labour,
and fragmented political leadership had conduced to poverty and made them
regard their NCR land as the "last bastion" of their legitimacy as a
people.
"They are the poorest community in