If you’ve ever wondered what the Orang Asli really want, this video features a Temiar community spokesperson articulating in no uncertain terms the rights they are entitled to.
Here, Pak Chik Arong reads out the rights of the Orang Asli to a gathering of Temiar protesters, just before he and a dozen others were arrested (and later released). Video by Shafie Dris (also arrested eventually). Information source: Center for Orang Asli Concerns.
They want their native rights and customary land and access to the natural resources on it. They want to preserve their cultural identity, and not to be “assimilated”. They want their political rights and the freedom of expression. They want the right to information; they refuse to be exploited and cheated of their land anymore. They are upset that they have been reduced to abject poverty after fifty four years of Independence.
Can anything be clearer than that?
Now Kelantan may be desperate for funds, but chasing the Orang Asli off their traditional land in the name of the state’s Ladang Rakyat programme is not the way to go about it.
It is time to revisit Kelantan’s claim to oil royalties to provide the state with much-needed funds so that it doesn’t feel pressured to allow logging or the destruction of forests to raise funds.
Kelantan and Putrajaya have been embroiled in a legal tussle over royalty payments the state claims is due to it for oil wealth extracted by Petronas within its shores.
Kelantan is currently appealing a decision allowing the federal government to be named as an intervener in a legal suit the state brought against Petronas. It is also appealing for the case to be transferred to the New Commercial Court (NCC).
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“The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities… It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority… The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party… that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.” – Justice John Dalton-Acton, History of Freedom in Antiquity, 1877 “Where any class feels that society is in conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.” –… Read more »
Good leaders like Ghandi always ensured that the rights of all groups (including minority groups) were protected. The rights of the orang asli and other minority groups in this country should be upheld to ensure that true democracy prevails in Malaysia.
Jacqueline
The unwritten law for the OA: HAK Tak Boleh Bantah!
At least in the wild wild west of North American colonization of “shoot first, take land, talk peace later”, there was a wonderful peace pipe smoking to the satisfaction (albeit not equal) of both parties without Washington Constitution sitting!
Democracy is about “majority rules” but RESPECT THE WEAK MINORITY.
But majority of Malaysian just too immature to accept that. What the current government did is little different than British colonisation era. Including education.