bullying the penans

my heart cries out for them – the penans of sarawak.

firstly, yesterday, attended the screening of the documentary about how the penans were affected by the bakum dam project. remember the documentary that was filmed by RTM2’s producer, chou z lam? (er… ex RTM2’s producer). only 2 episodes of his documentary series were shown when RTM axed his show and sacked him!

well the censored episodes 3, 4, 5 were up on you tube on about 10 days ago – i had not time to watch them yet… until yesterday when bk ong decided to screen the episodes, open to the public at d’space. since i prefer watching them on big screen (from VCD on projector) than on computer screen (and with internet interruption), i went along to watch them. it’s heartening to hear how those penans were ‘bullied’ by the government. go and watch them for yourselves, please. all 5 episodes are there. first two were shown on tv2, thus the commentary were in mandarin (since it was meant for the mandarin ‘gallery perdana’ show). however the other 3 episodes were in bahasa.

secondly, after watching the documentary and i was back home, getting online, i notice this article from free malaysia – ‘living in fear of rape and destruction‘.  it’s about the penans again. i read that with anger and sadness.  again and again, the penans are harassed and intimidated by gangs of loggers… and aided by the police!!

where is the justice here? why are the penans constantly being bullied? why are their ancestors land taken away from them?