Sarawak minister calls raped Penan girls “storytellers”
Bruno Manser Fund asks for an apology from James Masing, Sarawak Minister for Land Development – the Sarawak government continues to deny the results of a Malaysian government report on the sexual abuse of Penan girls and women
The Sarawak Minister for Land Development, James Masing, has dismissed Penan girls and women who have reported sexual abuse by logging-company employees as “storytellers”. In an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, which was broadcast this morning, James Masing was confronted with the statement of a teenage Penan girl who had been beaten unconscious and raped. Masing replied “They change their stories, and when they feel like it. That’s why I say the Penan are very good storytellers.”
BBC reporter Angus Stickler had met the girl at her village in Sarawak’s interior. Stickler said on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I spoke to Mary, a teenage girl who was tending to her baby daughter amid swarms of flies. The child’s legs were covered with running sores. It’s a desperate scene. Mary fell pregnant after she was raped.” According to the BBC, the girl had been hitching a ride to school and was picked up by a logging company driver and two other men. When they stopped off overnight, she was dragged from her room, beaten unconscious and raped.
The Bruno Manser Fund is dismayed that Sarawak officials continue to deny the results of the Malaysian Federal Government report on the sexual abuse of Penan girls and women and asks James Masing to apologize for his unacceptable statement.
In a 110-page report published in September 2009, the Malaysian Ministry for Women, Family and Community Development identified at least eight cases of sexual abuse of Penan girls and women by logging company workers in Sarawak’s Middle Baram region. The report said the girls’ vulnerability, widespread poverty and “dependency on the logging companies for transportation into towns, including the sending and ferrying of children to and from school” were among the reasons for such incidents of sexual abuse.
Despite the report, the Sarawak police have recently closed all investigations into the matter and are refusing to charge anyone over the cases. It is suspected that the perpetrators are being protected by the Sarawak police and the logging companies for political reasons.
