Penan villagers from upper and middle Baram are facing mounting obstacles in getting their children to school in the new year. Most schoolchildren and parents in Penan settlements have found it increasingly difficult to hitch rides on logging trucks, following the international outcry over the recent Women, Family and Community Development Ministry’s taskforce report on the rape and sexual abuse of girls by loggers.
According to reports from several Penan settlements in Baram, the main logging companies operating in the area have told them informally that the villagers are no longer allowed on the vehicles, ostensibly to pre-empt further reports of rape.
Local timber conglomerate Samling issued a letter to all its employees in Baram last July, warning them, on pain of dismissal, to stop visiting Penan settlements and transporting Penan villagers without the permission of camp managers.
Samling’s letter was written days after a damaging report was released in Parliament by the Penan Support Group (or PSG, a coalition of civil society groups) detailing new instances of sexual exploitation of Penan women by loggers.
Samling denied the letter represented any admission of knowledge of sexual abuse of local villagers by its employees.
Last September, Samling was reported to have threatened Penan villagers in the upper Baram settlement of Long Ajeng that the company would stop transporting schoolchildren if Penan womenfolk refused to sign a letter refuting the allegations of sexual abuse.
It now appears Penan schoolchildren are reaping the bitter fruit of the loggers’ obvious irritation at the reports of sexual abuse.
The family of one survivor of alleged sexual abuse by a logging company has said that they will not retract the allegations of sexual abuse, despite pressure from the authorities. The girl and her father insist they want to protect other local girls from such crimes in future.
“The rape reports have gained a lot of media attention,” a member of the PSG told Malaysiakini.
“But (the reports) have caused Penan children to face a kind of collective punishment. Those survivors who spoke out to try to prevent more crimes, now see schoolchildren (are) finding it harder to get rides on logging ‘four-wheel-drives’.
“It seems to me like the old, cynical saying is true: no good deed goes unpunished.”
Nothing has changed on the ground
The logging road network in middle and upper Baram is extensive. Most villagers from the dozens of small Penan settlements in Baram now trudge on these dirt tracks, often for days to get to schools, clinics or shops scattered throughout the vast region.
Traditional paths through the forest have fallen into disuse because of the practice of hitch-hiking along the timber tracks. Many paths, as well as waterways navigated using small longboats, have also been lost as logging has advanced, causing deforestation and siltation in the rivers.
Most villagers in middle and upper Baram send their children to a handful of secondary schools scattered throughout the region, including in Long San, Long Lama, Marudi and Bario.
Access to primary schools is slightly better, though many settlements like Long Ajeng are still not served by nearby schools, and children face several days’ walk to get to and from their spartan dormitories.
Following the revelations in the reports of sexual abuse released by the PSG and the federal women’s ministry, the state authorities promised to look into providing official transportation to and from Penan and other rural settlements to secondary schools.
However, many months later, nothing has changed on the ground.
Disadvantaged from birth
Struggling for education is not the only worry on the minds of the rural communities in Baram.
Mina (not her real name), a 16-year-old girl from Long Lamei, was heavily pregnant in 2006, but could not afford to travel nearly 400km from her home village to the nearest clinic in Marudi to give birth.
The midwife at her nearest clinic in Long Banga had advised Mina to deliver her baby in hospital. Mina was young and small in stature, carrying her first child, and complications were feared.
According to Mina and her husband, the midwife was sympathetic, but told them there was “no budget” to provide transport for her to go to hospital.
Mina’s mother offered rattan handicrafts, including mats, baskets and baby carriers, to every visitor to Long Lamei, trying to raise a little money for Mina to get to hospital.
Eventually, with the aid of donations from the odd tourists, the family scraped together enough to send Mina and her mother to Marudi.
Despite their anxiety about travelling to town, Mina and her mother bought tickets on the 18-seater Twin Otter that flies once a week from Long Banga to Marudi.
The delivery went smoothly in hospital: Mina and her daughter are both healthy now.
According to figures from the Ministry of Health, Sarawak has one of the highest numbers of births not attended by trained health professionals in the country.
Within Sarawak, the ethnic group with the highest rate of these unattended births is the Penan. The reasons for this are clearly poverty, and the scarcity and understaffing of government clinics in Baram.
State health officials admit the figures for births unattended by trained personnel are almost certainly underestimates, because many Penan births take place in the villages and are never recorded by the authorities, let alone cared for by skilled health workers.
KERUAH USIT is a human rights activist – ‘anak Sarawak, bangsa Malaysia’. This weekly column is an effort to provide a voice for marginalised Malaysians. Keruah Usit can be contacted at keruah_usit@yahoo.com.
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