The Malaysian Insight

INSTEAD of moving indigenous tribes out into suburban projects or plantation settlements, academics said they should be left in their jungle homes and given rights over their customary land.

Experts from Malaysia and the United Nations said this approach is better than current strategies that have thus far failed to uplift the lives of the native tribes in Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak.

They urged Pakatan Harapan to break away from the policies of the previous Barisan Nasional regime to make meaningful changes to the living standards of one of the country’s most vulnerable communities.

At the same time, the government should improve their access to public healthcare and education.

The decades-old plight of the peninsula Orang Asli, as well as natives from Sabah and Sarawak came to light again in a report by Prof Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.

A local academic, Prof Denison Jayasooria, accompanied the UN team on its 11-day working nationwide tour, which included visiting indigenous people’s settlements in Kelantan, Sabah and Sarawak.

What they found was that state governments were either negligent or regressive in their attitude on how to serve the native tribes under their jurisdiction.

“You cannot move them out of the forest into concrete buildings and impose a lifestyle that is totally alien to them,” Denison told The Malaysian Insight.

“Their ability to live well is connected to their land and you have to accommodate their claims to it. Their land rights are already enshrined in the federal constitution and Federal Court rulings.

“If you can set aside Malay reserve land, you can surely set aside customary land for Orang Asli.

“You can then build an agricultural industry around their current forest villages, while improving access to education and healthcare,” said Denison of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia’s Inter-Ethnic Studies Institute.

He said some state governments are bent on continuing failed strategies designed during the BN era.

This includes moving villagers out of their jungle homes and forcing them to integrate into the modern industrial economy, he said.

Or it involved turning their villages and their surrounding communal forests into a cash-crop plantation, such as palm oil and rubber, where they would then work and live.

Scholars and Orang Asli activists have repeatedly shown how these schemes have failed.

One stark example is Desa Temuan, an enclave for 500 Temuan tribe members in the middle of the upmarket Damansara Perdana neighbourhood in northern Petaling Jaya.

Despite a generous resettlement package that included bungalows, shares in Amanah Saham Bumiputera, welfare aid and courses on how to adapt to city life, many of the tribes people and their families failed to integrate.

In their 2010 documentary Hak Dinafikan, activists Abri Yok Chopil and Shafie Dris showed how Orang Asli who have been moved into Felda-like resettlement schemes are worse off than those who live in their traditional villages.

The centrality of land to Orang Asli economic, social and spiritual wellbeing was further documented in Suhakam’s authoritative National Inquiry into the Land Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2013.

Yet despite this all this evidence, states such as Kelantan continue to insist on old, failed strategies in dealing with their Orang Asli tribes.

In the UN team’s visit to Kelantan, officials told them the Orang Asli will be moved out of the forest into concrete units near the town of Gua Musang.

“The attitude of the Kelantan government towards the Orang Asli is abysmal.

“The plan is outrageous,” said Alston during a media briefing on his team’s findings.

“They are not poor, they are content as long as they are able to access their traditional lifestyles and have practical access to healthcare and education.” – August 26, 2019.