Fight for Penan justice or keep mum
By Jeswan Kaur, Free Malaysia Today
The recently concluded Sarawak state election has given seven women politicians a chance to become assemblypersons. An opportunity that brings with it the responsibility to do the “right thing”.
Four incumbents from the Barisan Nasional (BN) and three from opposition ally DAP now sit in the State Legislative Assembly.
DAP fielded four women – Violet Yong in Pending, Ting Tze Fui in Meradong and two new faces, Alice Lau Kiong Yieng in Bawang Assan and Christina Chiew in Batu Kawah. With the exception of Lau who lost to SUPP heavyweight Wong Soon Koh, the rest succeeded in coming on board as assemblypersons.
The youngest candidate was Chiew, who, at 27, managed to outdo Tan Joo Phoi, assistant minister in the chief minister’s office in winning the people’s trust.
With the election over, work is at hand for these women leaders. The most pressing and long-standing issue concerned the rape of the Penan women and girls, a matter which no authority has viewed seriously, much less offer help.
The police, the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry as well as Suhakam, Malaysia’s human rights body, have failed the Penan women in seeking justice for the sexual exploitation they have for years been suffering at the hands of the timber loggers.
The April 16 state election saw four incumbents from BN – Fatimah Abdullah, Sharifah Hasidah Sayeed Aman Ghazali, Simoi Peri and Rosey Yunus (Bekenu) – retaining their respective seats.
Fatimah, 54, won Dalat with a majority of 4,990 votes in a three-cornered fight. Fatimah, who is Parti Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu (PBB) Wanita deputy chief, was the only woman minister in the last Cabinet.
Justice a distant dream
Sharifah Hasidah, 42, retained her Semariang seat with a 5,431-vote majority in a straight fight against Zulrusdi Mohamad Hol of PKR.
Simoi, 47, kept her Lingga seat, with a majority of 2,506 votes in a three-cornered fight while Rosey, 55, of the Sarawak Progressive Democratic Party (SPDP), won the Bekenu seat with a majority of 3,714 votes in a four-cornered fight.
Regrettably, these four BN women representatives remained indifferent towards the plight of the Penan women who time and time again have cried rape.
For the rape survivors who dared take on the timber loggers, justice remains a distant dream.
In 2010, it was reported that a Penan women from Long Item, Baram in Sarawak, given the pseudonym “Bibi” by the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry’s National Task Force Report (in September 2009), gave birth to another baby in February last year.
The father of Bibi’s child was her alleged rapist, an Interhill logging camp worker known as “Johnny” or Ah Hing.
In 2008, Bibi lodged a police report of a rape in Bukit Aman and was given refuge by the Women’s Aid Organisation, a participant in the National Task Force. However, when Bibi returned to Long Item to visit her family, she again fell under the clutches of Ah Hing.
And contrary to Ah Hing’s claim made to the police and the Borneo Post, a local daily owned by a logging company that he was Bibi’s husband, the Penan Support Group (PSG) had documentary evidence that Ah Hing is registered with the government as the father of two sets of children born to two different mothers aside from Bibi; a Chinese woman and another Penan women.
Police ‘bought over’?
In her 2008 police report, Bibi said Ah Hing raped her in 2005 after she rejected his demand that she become his “wife”. She refused after learning from villagers that Ah Hing already had two wives and two families.
