The Orang Asli are not expendable — David D. Mathew

If there is one book that should be on every bookshelf, it would be Douglas Adam’s classic “The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”.

The book begins on a particular Thursday with a chap named Arthur Dent who wakes up to find a big yellow bulldozer outside his house.

It turns out that the town council was planning to build a bypass so that people could get from point A to point B faster. Arthur’s house got in the way and naturally, it had to be demolished.

So Arthur goes out of his house and lies down in front of the bulldozer that was advancing up his garden path.

The contractor tells him that he can’t win because he couldn’t possibly lie in front of the bulldozer indefinitely but Arthur defiantly replies “We’ll see who rusts first”.

“But Mr Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months,” says the contractor.

At this point you’d be thinking, gosh what a crisis. But you wouldn’t be overly concerned because it was Arthur’s house, not yours.

But there was something else afoot that very same day.

You see on this particular Thursday high up above in space, several dozen huge objects were heading towards Earth. Soon great ships hung in the air, over every nation on Earth.

And then suddenly every radio and television on Earth turned itself on to broadcast the following public address: “People of Earth, your attention please. This is Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council. As you will no doubt be aware, the plans for development of the outlying regions of the Galaxy require the building of a hyperspatial express route through your star system, and regrettably your planet is one of those scheduled for demolition. The process will take slightly less than two of your Earth minutes. Thank you.”

The voice then continued, “There’s no point in acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning department on Alpha Centauri for 50 of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now.”

This was the end of Earth. Mankind was about to be wiped out just so that an intergalactic highway could be built.

Now you’d be thinking — hey, that is just rude! What a colossal crisis. Life as we know it is over.

This was probably the same thoughts that went through the minds of the aboriginal peoples of the Temuan tribe from Bukit Tampoi some 15-odd years ago when bulldozers showed up to destroy their homes.

You see the government had decided that the KL International Airport was to be built in Sepang. This required an expressway. What stood in the way of this expressway was the Bukit Tampoi land occupied by the Temuans for at least the last 210 years.

So naturally the Temuans had to make way.

But the Temuans refused as they were not happy with the amount of compensation. The then-Selangor Barisan Nasional state government claimed that the land was state land and refused to recognise that the Temuans had any proprietary interest in the land at all.

Hence, the state refused to compensate the Temuans for the value of the land lost.

On March 22 and 27, 1996, the Temuans were evicted from the land by a police operation. The fruit trees and the crops on the land were destroyed, the houses, the balai raya and the balai adat of the Temuan community were forcibly demolished. Families were unceremoniously asked to go and fend for themselves in unkind weather.

The Temuans took their case to court with the assistance of a team of lawyers who took up the case pro bono. They sued the then-state government of Selangor, the Malaysian Government, Lembaga Lebuhraya Malaysia (LLM) and United Engineers Berhad (UEB).

The High Court ruled in their favour. So did the Court of Appeal which held that “this was a case of a case of deliberate trespass the sole purpose of which was to gain the plaintiffs’ land without paying them the full compensation due to them in accordance with the Land Acquisition Act.”

The Court of Appeal went further to say that “this is nevertheless a sad case. Sad, because of the treatment that the plaintiffs received in the hands of the defendants. Here you have a case where the very authority — the state — that is enjoined by the law to protect the aborigines turned upon them and permitted them to be treated in a most shoddy, cruel and oppressive manner.”

The defendants sought and obtained leave to appeal to the Federal Court but the appeal never took off. The March 8, 2008 political tsunami happened and Selangor fell into the hands of the Pakatan Rakyat.

Through the sterling efforts of state assembly member Elizabeth Wong, Mentri Besar Khalid Ibrahim eventually instructed the state legal adviser to withdraw Selangor’s appeal.

This brought the federal government and the rest of the defendants to the negotiation table.

In the end, LLM paid RM6.5 million in compensation to all the Temuans whose land was taken by the authorities for the construction of the Nilai-Banting highway.

The plight of the Temuans was not an isolated incident.

Despite Rural and Regional Development Deputy Minister Datuk Hasan Malek promising in October 2010 that the federal government would “protect Orang Asli interests”, their rights are still being trampled upon all over the country.

In September 2010, the Orang Asli Laut of Kuala Masai were awarded damages by the Johor Baru High Court for the unlawful demolition of their chapel by the authorities just 10 days before Christmas in 2005.

In October 2010, the Orang Asli of Kampung Mengkapor in Gambang, Pahang lodged a police report against contractors for trespassing and illegally logging their lands.

Last week, Orang Asli settlers in Pos Balar, Gua Musang claimed that they lost their source of income when a firm cleared their 100ha rubber plantation to develop a project called “Ladang Rakyat”.

The Orang Asli deserve better. Their rights ought to be protected and can never be subservient to corporate interests.

The federal government must be pro-active and come down hard on those that take the Orang Asli for a ride. It cannot close its eyes and expect the Orang Asli to battle it out in court every time there are incidences of encroachment.

Despite the federal government setting aside 108,520 hectares to be gazetted as Orang Asli reserves in Peninsular Malaysia, only 19,222 hectares have been gazetted as of 2007.

The statistics and news reports are grim.

If the way we treat our Orang Asli is an indication of how far our civilisation has progressed, then we ought to be ashamed.

This article is dedicated to the brave Temuans of Bukit Tampoi who fought for their rights and won the battle against those who considered them to be expendable. — mysinchew.com