The Remnants of our Penans

It is just so heartbreaking reading nonsensical remarks from Pek Moh and his men on our Penans, who have been displaced from their ancestral lands, by force, with no choice. True to what Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim said in his final part of 3-part interview with Mkini, "I can tell you now that there were some dumb MBs before", I guess now we can say some CMs are just plain...stupid? Tsk!

First, they say, “We don’t want them running around like animals. Shouldn’t they be taught to be hygienic like us and eat clean food?”.

Then, when responded to our Penans’ rape claims, they writhed, saying, “Why are you only concerned about rape involving the Penans? What is so special about it? To me, the purpose of them highlighting the alleged rape of Penan girls is more for political mileage”.

So, they don’t want our Penans to live like jungle animals yet they don’t care if our Penan girls and women are being raped by ‘their development-hungry animals’! Such double standard! Such perfect example of modern slavery!

“A living civilization creates; a dying, builds museums” ~ Martin H. Fischer

I wonder what is left for our Penans if we continue to have such megalomaniac leaders running their lives.

Our Penans have every right to live the kind of ancestral lifestyle they have been practicing centuries ago, just like us Malays, Chinese and Indians wish to enliven the culture and tradition we hold dear to our hearts.

What is the price of freedom to roam their majestic ancestral jungle – their sacred role to protect our nature’s treasure of its own kind – and freedom to express themselves in the way their ancestors had done so before? It is definitely priceless than just being given a piece of barren land and muddy ‘tanah merah’ roads that Pek Moh thinks he could repay to appease our Penans.

Let the remnants of our Penans lead a decent life, after we have sacrificed a huge part of our green lungs, their rightful birthplace, to a so-called civilization, so-damned Bakun Dam.

“Society is a made-up formula of what we are supposed to be, kept alive by those who believe in it.... I laugh in the ugly face of society, with all its fabricated dimensions” ~ Author Unknown