APPENDIX B: 12 MONTHS LATER

Pertak EpiLOG, July 1997

THE LOGGERS have gone, leaving an empty diesel tank and ugly scars in the jungle. Rumor has it that the Batin (Headman) of Kampung Orang Asli Pertak will be replaced soon but nobody really believes this. On June 6th a new Mentri Besar (Chief Minister) was sworn in. Within two weeks he has ordered helicopter surveillance to locate and identify environmentally ruinous projects in Selangor. The Star quoted him on 19 June 1997 as saying: “In future we want to be very careful not to develop forest reserve areas.”

However, the Orang Asli are more strapped for cash than ever before. This year the durian trees seem to be withholding their precious fruit. Mak Minah believes the spirits are angry and hurt because the forest has once again been rudely violated. Another reason, perhaps, is that the logging has scared off the fruit bats without which pollination cannot occur. (The barren season may also be simply part of a natural cycle. Utat Merkol tells me that durian trees need a recovery period after a bumper crop, and there was indeed a bumper crop last year. Whatever the case, more Pertak villagers have been recruited into factories, restaurants, and work gangs than in previous years.)

The rivers in Pertak, miraculously, still run clear and playful in sunny weather. But when heavy rains fall they turn a treacherous blood red with sometimes a tenfold increase in level and speed. A violent flashflood in early April drowned 6 campers - the same weekend a 14-year-old boy was saved from a watery death by a party of picnickers.

On 21 March 1997 the Temuan revived an ancient ritual called sawai to appease ancestral spirits and help heal the land. They had been neglecting their ceremonial duties as Guardians of the Rainforest since the start of the last World War. This event (which coincided with the Third Worldwide Equinox Ceremony for Planetary Awakening convened by Mayan Elders) was attended by Temuan from several villages, dozens of urbanite well-wishers, and a Reuters TV crew.

It has indeed been an action-packed year. Upon receiving word of logging in the vicinity of Bukit Kutu (gazetted as a bird and wildlife sanctuary in the 1940s), the press got on the job with gusto. Detailed reports began to appear in the New Straits Times and the Star, calling for a halt to the logging and a thorough inquiry into how the semi-literate Batin of Kg Pertak had been persuaded to lend his name to a scheme that would effectively destroy the future livelihood of his own tribe.

Spokesmen of various government departments involved produced the routine stonewall responses. We will investigate… This is nothing new… The application was in order… The boss is on medical leave… No need for EIA (Environmental Impact Assessment) if the area logged is less than 500 hectares…

 

ONE MORNING in September 1996 I was visited by two Special Branch officers, bearing a special invitation from their boss for a special chat. My mother-in-law Indah got a little hysterical seeing me go off with the police. “Don’t worry, I’ll be back after lunch with some veggies,” I yelled, refusing to be drawn into the melodrama of the moment.

At the Special Branch HQ in Kuala Kubu Bharu I learned that a formal petition for my eviction from Kampung Orang Asli Pertak had been lodged with the District Security Council. ASP Zulkifli Bashri handled it with impressive finesse. He said the petition was signed by Bidar Chik, the Batin of Pertak Village – though it was “highly unlikely” that he had drafted the text. But he wouldn’t say who he thought was behind the petition which basically stated that my presence in the village was a security threat. “Some people suspect you’re working for an NGO.  Are you?”

“No,” I replied, “I’m working for the Earth. And I think loggers are much more of a security threat to the area than I ever could be.”

A few days later I chanced upon ASP Zul and his team at a tea stall. They beckoned me over for a coffee. “Just for your information,” ASP Zul began, “we have submitted our report to the District Security Council. Our investigation shows no evidence that you pose a security threat. Furthermore, as you are married to an Orang Asli and have a child, we see no reason why you cannot continue residing in the village.”

I was elated.  Vindicated by the Secret Police! The officers I had met seemed like a fairly decent bunch.  One even told me that he was glad to see someone defending the green, green hills of Pertak. But it was clear that the police operated within official guidelines laid down by the State government. If they were directed to use the ISA against environmental activists, they would have little choice - short of quitting the Force. (ISA can be taken as either the “Infernal Security Act” which allows the police to detain indefinitely without trial - or the Arabic form of “Jesus.”)

An earlier incident drove home this point. Soon after the loggers began wreaking their havoc, a nature-lover and regular picnicker at Pertak had notified SAM (Sahabat Alam Malaysia, a Non-Governmental Organization affiliated with Friends of the Earth)), who conducted their own investigation and decided to take up the case. Their representative, Sreela Kolandai, had visited Pertak Village to see if there was a general consensus amongst the Orang Asli to protest having their ancestral lands logged. Problem was, the only convenient place for the villagers to gather and discuss the problem was the balai (community hall) - and only the Batin had the keys. He was certainly in no mood to cooperate.  Sreela then suggested that all those concerned about the logging should meet outside the balai the next afternoon.

When we arrived at 2.30 p.m. the following day, no one was in sight apart from a couple of Special Branch officers on motorbikes. One of them rode up to me and said: "I hope you're not about to hold a ceramah (discussion) here. We have orders to confiscate all your identity cards, and then you'll have to collect them at the police station."

"News travels fast around here," I quipped, looking over at the deserted and locked-up balai. "As you can see, there's no one around to hold a ceramah. If they all showed up now, maybe we could have our meeting at the Balai Polis?"

The officer sighed and offered me a cigarette. "Look, it's Saturday and I'd rather be with my kids. Please don't force us to do anything unpleasant, okay?"

"Don't worry, you can go home and relax. But could you tell me just one thing… how did you guys hear about today's meeting?"

He reached out to light my cigarette. "Someone called us early this morning. All I can tell you is that it wasn't any of the Orang Asli. The caller informed us that NGO people would be here."

I felt a fleeting sense of despair. Someone had snitched to the Batin last night. There had been only a handful of us present, yet treachery was afoot! It was beginning to look like there was nothing anyone could do to save one of the few remaining green sanctuaries in Selangor.

 

MOST ORANG ASLI have gotten so used to being powerless, the idea of resistance to any kind of authority is almost alien. Some of them had an ingrained sense of setia (loyalty) to the Kerajaan (Government). Going against the Batin was tantamount to going against the Government - since he represented the will of the JHEOA - the visible face of Official Authority. And, moreover, wasn't "development" the avowed objective of the Kerajaan (which derives from the root word Raja, meaning Monarch, thereby effectively reinforcing the residual feudalism of local bureaucracy)?

One evening in a drunken burst of eloquence, my brother-in-law Ali expressed his misgivings about the whole affair. "I think it's not right," he spluttered. "The Batin is still the Batin - good or bad, smart or stupid - we must respect and support him!" Obviously the post-modern debate on Hang Tuah versus Hang Jebat as the "true Malay hero" had completely bypassed Ali (Hang Tuah was absolutely loyal to the Sultan’s orders, regardless of ethical principles; Hang Jebat was loyal to a sense of humanity and justice). Into the valley of death rode the six hundred… That famous refrain from "Charge of the Light Brigade" came unbidden into my mind.

"Look, I've told you before I'm only a burglar alarm - like a spotlight to keep rats away from the rice in the warehouse. I can't go after the thieves - YOU have to do that or stop complaining about having no rice to eat!"

 

THE UNPRECEDENTED PUBLICITY surrounding the Pertak logging concession seemed to have no effect whatsoever on the bulldozers charging around the slopes of Bukit Kutu. The loggers had cleared an area just in front of my hut as their logging yard. Every day at least 50 trees - ranging in age from 5 to 250 years - were added to the growing stacks of tropical hardwoods, valued, tagged and ready for the sawmills. In their zeal to maximize profits, the loggers had destroyed dozens of young fruit trees, including rare jungle species, and even desecrated a few Orang Asli graves. They also left behind hazardous heaps of broken branches, unwanted logs, and other debris, piled up at various points along the river, waiting for the rainy season to turn into another potential Pos Dipang disaster (a giant mudslide on 29 August 1996 that destroyed almost an entire Orang Asli village in Perak).

Bukit Kutu, once known as Treacher’s Hill, was a choice resort for the Colonials before Fraser’s Hill overtook it in popularity. I tried to draw attention to the fact that Bukit Kutu, apart from being a gazetted bird and wildlife sanctuary, was second only to nearby Gunung Rajah in terms of its sacred significance to Temuan spiritual tradition. Instead, I found myself attracting the attention of various government departments. Senior officials from the Selangor Forestry Department dropped by my hut, armed with cameras. The Department of Environment sent a delegation to check if I was causing any damage to the ecosystem. The JHEOA chose to remain unseen like the Orang Halus (elven folk). They would work behind the scenes to get rid of the problem (namely me, I suppose).

It was very disappointing, to say the least. When I first came to live amongst the Orang Asli, I had harbored hopes of obtaining the cooperation of the Orang Asli Affairs Department, so that we could resolve basic problems like energy and water supply; and how to stimulate the curiosity and interest of the younger ones in left-brained learning. Kampung Orang Asli Pertak still has no electricity or piped water - but I was convinced that alternative methods of obtaining both would provide the villagers with free energy, courtesy of the river - and abundant clean water, courtesy of underground springs. Now I found myself surrounded by bulldozers and bureaucrats!

 

A VISITING GEOMANCER and Earth-healer from Queensland, Australia, told me the Orang Asli could try performing sacred rituals to reharmonize the magnetic field of the whole area. "They must do it on October 27th when the Goddess force will be very powerful," Soluntra urged. I passed her message along to some of the Asli, but all they could do was shake their heads sadly: "How can we persuade everyone to come together for sacred rituals when the Batin himself believes only in the power of money?"

There is a very fine line between faith in God(dess) and terminal fatalism. It seemed to me that my adopted Temuan kinfolk had succumbed to profound spiritual fatigue - and I perfectly understood why. To keep myself in good cheer I focused on seeing my baby son Ahau grow. He seemed perfectly content and mellow, giving me constant messages to quit worrying and let events unfold in their own good time.

Around midnight on the eve of October 21st 1996, a ferocious Water Dragon roared down the Pertak hills on a wild rampage to the sea, swallowing up over 200 meters (nearly 700 feet) of the Ampang Pecah road leading out of Kuala Kubu Bharu. Fed by torrential rains and gorged on tons of raw earth, the monster flash flood forced the evacuation of hundreds of pajama-clad urbanites and generated more than 15 landslides in its wake. October 21st, ironically, was the start of National Environment Week.

 

ALARMED BY the massive environmental damage they saw, an investigative team from Berita Harian filed a series of hard-hitting reports on the Pertak logging concession and the glaring irregularities surrounding it. The Mentri Besar had little choice. He revoked the permit on October 27th (even though it was a Sunday) - the exact date indicated by Soluntra when Goddess Power would take charge! (Less than two months later, on the solstitial date of December 22nd, the same Mentri Besar was arrested in Brisbane while attempting to leave Australia lugging a suitcase stuffed with undeclared cash worth A$1.2 million. The first court hearing was fixed for the equinox, March 21st 1997 - the day the Temuan revived their sawai ritual.  Make of this what you will!)

FOR THE TIME BEING the destruction has been stopped. But who can repair the damage already done? Why... the Orang Asli of course. With a little bit of help from the JHEOA - say, RM3 million, the estimated worth of the timber in their dusun (smallholdings) - to relieve them for two years from having to earn their modest wages as security guards, grass cutters and factory hands, and free them to replant the logged areas with fruit trees of their choice. Money well spent, I’d venture, since the accelerated healing of this vital water catchment area would save taxpayers possible billions in flood alleviation and landslide repairs in the coming years.

But the first step towards healing would be for the State government to immediately gazette the areas demarcated as Orang Asli reserves, to deter further encroachments.

"Gazettement is a mere procedural matter," the JHEOA director-general told the Star in a report dated 12 September 1996.

Kampung Orang Asli Pertak is among several such areas "approved for gazetting" in 1965 as Orang Asli reserves. Getting them properly gazetted ought to take a mere 32 days, not another 32 years.

[First published in the Sunday Mail, 10 August 1997, in slightly abridged form]

 

 

 

 

© Antares, 1997

APPENDIX D: DARK INTRIGUES IN SCENIC PLACES

A Special Report from Kampung Pertak, July 2003

As the solstice sun began to sink behind the misty hills of Pertak on June 22, a wild-eyed Rafik Benut staggered towards Lot 22, Kampung Pertak, brandishing a bunch of keys and a parang. No one made an attempt to stop him as he let himself into the house after a bit of fumbling with the keys. Even the dogs gave him a wide berth. Rafik was well-known for his violent outbursts, especially when intoxicated.

About three years ago, Rafik had suddenly reappeared in the village, having served a 6-year jail sentence for chopping up the headman’s 19-year-old daughter and attempting to burn the gory evidence. The headman, Bidar Chik, asked that Rafik be relocated to another community but the JHEOA (Orang Asli Affairs Department) overrode his protests. Rafik was a reformed man, they asserted, and furthermore had converted to Islam while in prison.

For months he had been coveting this house, which belonged to his uncle Selindar Babot (who was involved in the love triangle with Rafik and Bidar’s daughter which ended in bloodshed and grief). Selindar shared the house with two other old bachelors – Utat and Ujah  – but all three preferred to live 40 minutes away in a rundown shanty overlooking the river. Since they weren’t comfortable in the new 3-bedroom chalet-style house built by the dam consortium as part of the resettlement scheme, the old men had agreed to let some friends from KL use it as a weekend retreat – in exchange for a monthly food allowance of RM100 each. All parties were happy with this arrangement – except for a particular faction in the village who had been groomed to serve as the eyes and ears of the JHEOA.

When the Selangor Dam project was announced in late 1998, Bidar Chik had been outspoken in his criticism. He openly supported the No-Dam campaign, much to the consternation of the JHEOA. Eventually, Bidar was pacified and “turned around” with generous presents and veiled threats by agents of the dam consortium – but he was now regarded as an uncooperative party by the JHEOA which began to cultivate a special relationship with Bidar’s unofficial deputy, Uha Anak Penengah.

A once quiet and unassuming man, Uha soon turned into a different personality when the Department of Orang Asli Affairs appointed him Head of Village Security (Setiausaha Jawatankuasa Keselamatan Kampung). With the JHEOA behind him, Uha acquired an aura of self-importance and de facto leadership of a group of disgruntled young men with no strong ties to tradition and few hopes for the future. Some of them once had jobs with the dam consortium, driving trucks or operating excavators. Others are grass cutters with private contractors and harvest bamboo or petai on the side. But most of them spend the better part of their wages at the local liquor store – and on motorbike repairs each time they fall off their machines after a binge, which is more often than not.

Uha’s popularity among the disenchanted youth of Kg Pertak was further enhanced when he bought some musical instruments and turned his bachelor pad into a rehearsal space for the village combo. He himself learnt how to play drums fairly well, and on weekends the boom and thud of bass and drums would carry on till nearly dawn. Uha had had little luck finding himself a wife (he was married to a girl from Pahang for less than a week before she died suddenly and mysteriously) and, at 45, looked likely to join the Kg Pertak Old Bachelors’ Club.

Rumors were rife that Uha had set his romantic sights on Apin, one of the village belles, even offering her parents a large sum of money for her hand. But Apin favored the attentions of an “outsider” – a young man from KL who had been visiting Pertak regularly for years – and who was lodging for a while at Lot 22 (Selindar, Utat and Ujah’s house). Ujah, before he died in March, had adopted this young man as his son.

Village legend has it that Uha’s deceased father Penengah had been rather truculent and troublesome in his day, causing inter-familial feuds that endured long after his passing. Indeed, the truculent gene seems to have been passed down to many of his sons and grandsons. In March 1999 Ramsit Angong, the headman of Kg Gerachi, lodged a police report against Uha and a few of his nephews for bashing him up so badly he needed to be hospitalized for five days. No action was ever taken against the Pertak rowdies – and soon afterwards Ramsit buckled under pressure and signed over his ancestral lands to the dam project for a hefty cash compensation (more than a million, some say) and membership in the Kuala Kubu Bharu Golf Club.

 SHADOW HEADMAN

By the time Kg Pertak was relocated and the villagers handed the keys to their brand new brick houses with electricity and running water, Bidar Chik had virtually been bypassed by the JHEOA, whose officers preferred to deal with their hand-picked shadow headman Uha Anak Penengah - a willing accomplice to the Orang Asli Affairs Department’s agenda of maintaining their decades-long control of all Orang Asli tribes in the Malay Peninsula.

There were initial problems arising from the allocation of houses. Uha was given a house to share with his younger brother Ayul – but they weren’t on the best of terms. Ayul decided to clear an area upstream of the village to build his own plank house. Bidar claimed that spot as part of his tanah pusaka (ancestral land) and tried to stop Ayul from proceeding, whereupon Ayul’s Indonesian friends bound Bidar to a tree and threatened him with a chainsaw. Bidar reported to the police and they paid a visit to Ayul’s encampment but found no one around, so they left it at that.

Bidar has understandably been keeping a low profile in the village, acutely aware that he was headman in name only. One of the women wanted to open a café and small provision shop in Kg Pertak and decided the ideal location would be on the edge of the soccer field, near a popular picnic spot. Bidar was briefed on the plan and expressed his support. However, he said he would first have to consult the JHEOA on the matter as he had no power to give the go-ahead. The JHEOA declared that the project had potential but didn’t think the location was suitable. With that, a rare show of entrepreneurial initiative by an Orang Asli was prematurely nipped in the bud. After 50 years of being colonized in their own homeland, most Orang Asli are incapable of pushing for what they want, believing there will always be someone in authority with the power to stop them. And no one can blame them for feeling that way, since the JHEOA has become accustomed to treating their legal wards like one would a problematic stepchild.

Rafik Benut’s attempt to claim Lot 22, as it transpired, was instigated by Uha Anak Penengah, with the tacit endorsement of the JHEOA (or, at least, its agents in the Kuala Kubu Bharu office). During a chat with two senior JHEOA officers, it became clear that they weren’t happy about Selindar and his friends continuing to live in the forest, following the old ways. If they chose to let out their property to “outsiders” the Department would hand the house over to their “Muslim convert,” a convicted killer on parole with a history of drunken brawling. Never mind if that would mean an abrupt loss of regular income for the old men. The residents of Kg Pertak wouldn’t know, anyway, that the JHEOA has no legal authority to confiscate property from Orang Asli they deem “uncooperative” to pass on to their own “willing stooges.”

In any case, how did an ex-convict and murderer acquire the keys to Lot 22? The JHEOA had handed a spare set to Uha, their “mainman” in Kg Pertak, who then passed the keys to his hatchet man and protégé, Rafik Benut. Ironically, these are the men entrusted by the JHEOA with maintaining village security.

And what did the official headman have to say about this entire affair? Bidar Chik was disturbed that not only was Rafik still at large in Kg Pertak and plaguing his peace of mind, but that the JHEOA had heavy-handedly overridden his authority and lent official support to one of Uha’s hooligans, instigating him to commit unlawful entry into another’s property. But Bidar was at a complete loss as to what he could do to restore order to his village. “Maybe you could invite the press here?” he suggested. “I want the world to know that hoodlums are intimidating the peace-loving folk of Kg Pertak.”

Rafik and some of Uha’s gang have repeatedly harassed Selindar and Utat for the house keys until the old men were paralyzed with fear and unable to speak their feelings. They have no desire to let Rafik seize the house from them and deprive them of a regular cash income, but want Bidar to resolve the issue on their behalf. Will the meek inherit the Earth?

I’m often asked by well-wishers what they can do to help the Orang Asli. Some offer to donate clothes, foodstuff, books, toys. Others are eager to conduct educational workshops with the kids or sponsor intercultural exchanges. A few are keen to raise funds for projects that could benefit the Orang Asli. It’s actually quite amazing how many urbanites in recent years have suddenly become aware of their brethren in “remote” areas and sincerely desire to contribute positively to the future of our Orang Asli communities.

Every little effort helps, I say, it’s always reassuring to know that one has so many friends out there. But the greatest stumbling block to the Orang Asli ever regaining the self-esteem and self-confidence, without which they are unlikely to ever regain their self-reliance, is the government department set up in 1954 to “manage their affairs” - and which continues to do so today when no legal or political justification exists, nor does a “communist threat.”

“You wouldn’t know what it’s like to be Orang Asli,” I tell them, “until you’ve lived under the ‘benign’ despotism of the Jabatan Hal Ehwal Orang Asli for a few generations.”

8 July 2003

*14 November 2005 Update:

More than three years have passed since I wrote this report and there have been significant shifts in the general morale in Kampung Pertak. For a start, the generations-old feud between Penengah’s clan and the Batin's clan seems to have lost its charge and the entire village is a great deal more mellow and relaxed. 

A contributing factor to the newfound peace may well be the ‘Bamboo Palace’ project inaugurated in February 2005 when I commissioned Hitap Anak Hitam (better known as Yam Kokok) to build a thatch-roofed hut behind #21 Kampung Pertak, to be used as a guesthouse. Yam Kokok is married to one of Penengah’s daughters.

When construction began, Yam Kokok recruited several of his relatives to help gather and weave the bertam leaves for the massive roof. Indeed, a good cross-section of the various clans ended up on the payroll for the ‘Bamboo Palace’ project. In the three months it took to complete, I noticed that tensions began to ease as work progressed on the hut. Being given the chance to construct a traditional style hut, which requires intensive labor and cooperation, seemed to have a therapeutic effect on everybody who contributed energy to the project. In the end, exactly half the overall construction budget of RM8,000 went towards labor - and even the youngsters who helped carry materials were paid in cash as well as in food and drinks.

Indeed, the biggest shift of all occurred late one night several months ago, when Ayul, younger brother of Uha, came to visit me unexpectedly. He was completely sloshed but apparently needed someone to converse with, so I invited him up and offered him a hot coffee. Ayul told me a lot of stories about various characters in the village, but what struck me hardest was when he stated that Rafik had been wrongfully imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit. When I questioned him further on this, Ayul merely said that Rafik has been his housemate for a few years now and has no need to hide the truth from him.

Weeks later, I heard Rafik yelling at my dogs and complaining that he had been bitten. I went down to investigate and saw that there was just a small tooth mark on his ankle where one of my dogs had nipped him. The skin wasn’t even broken but Rafik made a huge fuss and demanded RM20 cash compensation. I gave him a blast of energetic healing, then went back to the house and returned with RM10, which Rafik accepted with delight and gratitude. This simple event shifted his formerly hostile attitude towards me.

Early in November; I saw Rafik waiting for the bus to town and offered him a lift. It was the first time he had sat in my van. I turned around and asked him point blank: “Did you kill the Batin’s daughter?” - adding, “Look, you were found guilty and sent to jail for six years, so it makes no difference to you - but it makes a difference to me. I want to know straight from you what the truth is.”

“Aku sumpah,” Rafik said, “I swear I didn’t do it.” So why did he let Selindar off the hook? He refused to discuss it further; saying it was all in the past.

Before he got off opposite the Kuala Kubu Bharu Post Office I shook Rafik’s hand and apologized to him for having believed all these years that he was indeed a murderer - and for describing him as such. What was recorded in July 2003 stands as a document of the situation THEN. However, it’s absolutely essential to set the record STRAIGHT (especially now that everyone involved in the drama has returned to Pulau Buah).

14 November 2005