How about comments made by Masing and Fadillah about Penan sex lifestyle before? Is it worse than Harian Metroll or what?
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S’wak minister draws flak over Penan rape
By Keruah Usit, Malaysia Kini, 9 Dec 2009
Sarawak Land Minister James Masing has come under fire for his scornful dismissal of claims that Penan girls and women have been sexually abused by employees of logging companies.
In an interview with BBC Radio 4′s flagship Today programme, broadcast on Dec 7, Masing said: “I think this is where we get confused. I think… the Penan are a most interesting group of people and they operate on different social etiquette as us… a lot this sex by consensual sex.”
BBC correspondent Angus Stickler then quoted Mary, a young Penan teenager, as saying that she had been dragged from her room, beaten unconscious and raped, after she had hitched a ride to school on a logging truck.
A federal government task force had confirmed in a report on Sept 9 that girls as young as 10 had been raped by loggers. Like Mary, some have borne children as a result of rape.
Masing, however, told the BBC: “They change their stories, and when they feel like it. That’s why I say Penan are very good storytellers.”
His remark is typical of the Sarawak government response. The official line has been to deny the rape of Penan girls and women by loggers, and to smear the Penan as primitive and promiscuous liars, while declaring that logging is a form of development.
The Sarawak government has asserted that logging brings roads, even if they are poorly maintained, to remote native Dayak communities.
However, the same roads have led to numerous reports of sexual assault on local Dayak, including Penan, girls, by logging company drivers and employees.
Masing’s slur of “changing stories” may be a reference to the police report lodged by a Penan rape survivor, ‘Bibi’, who withdraw her allegation.
But the Penan Support Group (PSG), a civil society coalition, pointed out her alleged rapist, Ah Heng (called ‘Johnny’ in the task force report) had escorted her to make the retraction. It said Ah Heng threatened and intimidated her into changing her story.
The PSG have criticised the police for closing their investigation into the sexual abuse, although the police had a representative in the task force.
The Bruno Manser Foundation (BMF), a NGO based in Switzerland that works for the Penan in Sarawak, has called on Masing to issue an apology.
The BMF had highlighted the sexual abuse of Penan by loggers last year. This sparked ocal media coverage and led eventually to the high-level task force investigation.
Masing’s changing story
Masing is unlikely to comply with any request to apologise. He is a leader of the Dayak-based Parti Rakyat Sarawak (PRS), a splinter group from the Parti Bansa Dayak Sarawak (PBDS).
The PBDS nearly took over the Sarawak government in 1987 from Abdul Taib Mahmud, the most tenacious chief minister in the history of Malaysia.
Masing was PBDS vice-president and a stalwart of the opposition against Taib’s leadership of the state Barisan Nasional (BN) at the time. With a doctorate in anthropology, Masing was one of the most articulate political voices expressing the anger of the majority Dayaks, over the loss of their land to logging and plantation companies.
Following a crushing PBDS defeat in state elections in 1991, the party was broken and returned to the state BN. Masing was instrumental in dismantling the PBDS. He set up the PRS in 2003, claiming to represent Dayak people in the state BN.
Since then, he has been vilified by the Dayak communities fighting for their customary land rights all over Sarawak. The Penan, numbering some 15,000, are one of the ethnic groups included under the Dayak umbrella.
Masing is a highly qualified anthropologist. He understands the false dichotomy between ‘them’ and ‘us’. He has been trained in the cultural sensitivity required of all ethnographers and, as such, should serve as a Dayak spokesman for the Sarawak government.
Instead, he has become a vociferous defender of the Sarawak government’s abysmal record of deprivation of the Dayaks’ native customary rights (NCR) to land. He has transformed into the nemesis of his previous identity as a proponent of Dayak rights.
Sarawak’s political rivalries have thrown up public announcements and graphic descriptions of how its ministers allocate timber licences to family members and friends. They in turn lease the licences to loggers to extract timber. The logging companies – and their benefactors – have grown fabulously rich from their concessions.
Under the Sarawak Land Code 1958, natives are entitled to claim land they have used under customary law or adat. The Federal Court has affirmed the natives’ customary claims in celebrated landmark decisions such as Nor Nyawai vs Borneo Pulp Plantation Sdn Bhd, and Madeli Salleh vs the Government of Sarawak.
Regardless of court decisions, the logging companies, oil palm plantations and hydro-electric dam construction corporations have bulldozed these NCR claims aside. The state government claims all land without title is state land, even if NCR claims are pending.
Frustrated by the failure of the law to protect their communal farms and forests – and with landmark court cases ignored by the executive – Dayak communities have set up many blockades against the logging and oil palm companies.
Yet Masing continues to deny the widespread hardship among rural Dayak. He was disparaging about the Dayaks who fought for their land rights.
“You’re looking at state land. That land belongs to the government,” he told the BBC.
“But you cannot condone people who are squatters who are in areas where they should not be. If it is indeed their land, the law of the land will take care of that.”
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Demeaning remarks blight PM’s Baram visit
by Keruah Usit, Malaysia Kini, Jul 21, 2010
Fadillah Yusof, Youth wing head of Parti Pesaka Bumiputra Bersatu (PBB), the dominant party in Sarawak’s ruling BN coalition, has ignited controversy with a public statement demeaning Penan girls and women.
Fadillah suggested in a Star report on July 18 that the Penan have different sexual mores from other people and insinuated that Penan girls begin sexual relations at the age of 14.
The remarks are likely to have caused embarrassment to premier Najib Abdul Razak, coming just days before his planned walkabout in upper Baram tomorrow.
The rape of indigenous Penan communities by loggers who appear to enjoy immunity from the law has drawn worldwide condemnation.
The sexual violence has been placed in a wider context of systematic deprivation, and invasion of Penan lands by loggers and other outsiders.
Most rural Penan communities are deeply devoted to the conservative Sidang Injil Borneo (SIB, Borneo Evangelical Congress). Even in poor villages with barely enough to eat, congregations pack churches every day, and three times on Sundays. SIB doctrine proscribes alcohol, smoking and sexual promiscuity.
Najib’s visit is aimed at defusing the sex abuse scandal involving well-connected logging conglomerates. However, Fadillah’s remarks may now have irrevocably damaged the anticipated public relations gains from Najib’s inaugural visit to the region as prime minister.
Fadillah has come under immediate fire from advocates of justice for the Penan.
“I cannot help feeling cynical about Najib’s planned visit on July 22. I don’t think the Penan victims can expect his sympathy,” land rights lawyer and PKR state information chief See Chee How told Malaysiakini.
“Worse still, any hope that the PM will address the wider context of the systematic rapes have been dashed.”
‘Sweeping remarks’
Fadillah, who is also federal deputy minister for science, technology and innovation, was the latest state official to repeat allegations by Sarawak land minister James Jemut Masing that Penan sexual activity begins at a young age.
“They are different from us. They might not have the same values,” Fadillah (right) said, according to the news report.
He quoted an example of a Penan girl marrying at the age of 14, but did not furnish any details of this statutory rape. He did not elaborate on how “different” Penan values might cast doubt on the reports of sexual violence by loggers.
“The sweeping remarks about NGOs, Penan women and their culture are most unbecoming and disgraceful, coming from a deputy minister who is a lawyer by training,” See argued.
Sarawak’s political elite have been dismissive of reports of sexual violence visited on rural communities by loggers.
This is despite one such report, released last September, being produced by a national task force led by the director-general of the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry. The task force was staffed by representatives of the police force and the Sarawak government itself, among others.
It documented sexual violence on schoolgirls, some as young as 10, by timber camp workers and lorry drivers. Loggers were reported to have kidnapped under-aged girls to timber camps while the girls were hitch-hiking to and from school.
But the state authorities have refused to acknowledge that sexual crimes are taking place, despite the reports of 15 different cases in Upper and Middle Baram being compiled during brief missions, lasting barely a week each, by the national task force and the recent Penan Support Group (PSG) fact-finding mission.
Fadillah announced that PBB Youth would mount its own fact-finding mission to Middle Baram, saying: “We will work with NGOs to find out the truth. If the rapes really did occur, we will take action.”
He did not specify the NGOs he plans to work with. Members of the independent PSG mission have said the PBB has not made any contact with them so far.
Fadillah also failed to outline what action the Youth wing might take, if its proposed mission were to uncover further sexual violence by loggers.
Arrest warrants for rape survivors?
Despite participating in the national task force in 2008 and receiving reports from rape survivors in Bukit Aman, the police have said they have drawn a blank in their investigations.
They eventually declared they had insufficient funds for a joint mission with the PSG, breaking a promise made by the inspector-general last year.
Fadillah did, however, claim that PSG allegations of police inaction are inaccurate, saying the police had “taken the initiative” to lodge reports and carry out investigations. Yet not a single arrest has been made, nor a single Penan survivor been protected.
The assertion that Penan girls and women do not hold the same sexual standards as other human beings echoes insults levelled against the poverty-stricken community by Masing (right).
“I think this is where we get confused I think…the Penan are a most interesting group of people and they operate on different social etiquette as us…a lot this sex by consensual sex,” Masing told the BBC last December.
When Masing’s interviewer, Angus Stickler, pointed out that a young Penan girl had told the BBC she had been beaten unconscious and raped by loggers, Masing alleged: “They change their stories (as) and when they feel like it. That’s why I say Penan are very good story tellers.”
According to Star, Masing suggested on July 9 that Penan girls and women making reports of sexual abuse might be “liars”. He demanded that the police issue arrest warrants for survivors of rape if they “refuse to co-operate with the authorities”.
“I am an anthropologist-cum-politician, therefore social issues like the alleged sexual abuse of Penan girls irk me. We must find the truth of the matter now. The public must know the truth, and punish the culprits or the liars,” he said.
The punishment of the “culprits” appears no closer today than when the scandal broke two years ago.