Reports of the arrest of 47 Temiar Orang Asli in Gua Musang, Kelantan has spark anger from all walks of life in Malaysia especially among Orang Asal community. This has come after the notice from Forestry Department to tear down the blockade they erected to stop loggers from destroying their forest homes expired on 20th November. The Temiar Orang Asli has expressed their protest against the logging activities that was approved by the PAS government through the Ladang Rakyat Scheme since several years ago.
The Orang Asli community have tried all avenues including presenting a memorandum to the PAS government but it has felled to blind eyes and deaf ears. So the Orang Asli errected the blockade as the last resort to protect their homeland from distruction.
I visited the area several years ago when conducted Community Mapping and facilitated consultations for SUHAKAM during the National inquiry on Orang Asal Customary Land Rights at Pos Balar and Kuala Betis. That time the Orang Asli already expressed their grief worry about the rapid destruction of the forest due to logging activities and massive conversion of forest to Oil Palm Plantation under the Ladang Rakyat scheme.
The orang Asli have warned about possible adverse impact including flash floods but nobody cares, soon enough the Kelantan Floods happened and yet after all that happened, the PAS government never seem to bother about the consequence of environment degradation. The orang Asal is trying to tell them to stop, but instead they send an army or armed personnel to arrest them as is they are terrorist!
The action by the PAS government and the authorities is akin to ethnic cleansing of the Orang Asli in Kelantan by denying the Orang Asli their rights to the forest and ancestral land. The land is life for the Indigenous Peoples, denying the Indigenous Peoples to their land is as same as denying their rights to life. This is a clear violation to the rights of the Orang Asal, we condemn this act of atrocity towards the indigenous Orang Asal in Malaysia.
The actions by the authorities shows the failure of both the State and Federal government in running their fiduciary duties to protect the most vulnerable segment of the society which is the Orang Asal of Malaysia. The United Nations Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) has explicitly laid out the fundamentals on indigenous peoples rights standards and Malaysia has the obligations to these commitment to the UN Human rights charters.
We condemn this act and demand the immediate release the Orang Asli that was detained without conditions. We also call upon PAS government to halt all timber exploration within the Orang Asli ancestral domain and gazette it as Orang Asli reserve that was long overdue.