Jabu says negative NGOs could have a hand in federal government finding

KUCHING: Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Patinggi Tan Sri Alfred Jabu yesterday questioned the credibility of a government report about allegations of rape of Penan women.

Although he has not seen the actual report from a special task force set up by the federal government as of yesterday, he believed negative non-governmental organisations (NGOs) could have a hand in it.

“There may be a report, but you must remember that negative NGOs were strongly behind it,” he told reporters when told that the report indicated that rape cases as well as sexual exploitations occurred in Ulu Baram where the Penans live.

Jabu, who is in charge of Penan affairs by virtue of his position as Minister of Rural Development, added that the media also played a role by highlighting the issues.

Nevertheless, he said if the allegations in the report were true then the rule of law must prevail.

“If there are grounds to take action (against the rape offenders), then it should be done. We have always complied with the rule of law,” the deputy chief minister said.

He said the state government would like to study the report if it was ready.

“We will study the report on the presumption that it is based on fairness,” he added.

The taskforce, set up by the Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development in October 2008 following the highly publicised allegations of rape in September 2008, concluded that exploitations on the Penans stemmed from consequences of imbalanced development.

The report was uploaded into the ministry’s website and in several blogs.

Jabu also said Swiss environmentalist Bruno Manser had exploited the Penans.

Some of the Penans who were in cahoots with Manser for around three years (in the 1980s) have admitted that they were fooled by the Swiss.

He said Manser went to live among the Penans so that he could make a documentary and some money.

“After being in cahoots with Bruno Manser for about three years, these Penans now admit that they had gained nothing from him,” Jabu added.

He said: “The negative NGOs made use of the Penans to feed their concocted stories about Malaysia. Bruno Manser produced documentary and aired it on TV. But how much have the Penans gained from it?”

The negative NGOs were also ‘nothing’ in their own countries, he said.

“If all the Penans have settled down, the negative NGOs cannot make up stories and cannot earn their living by exploiting the Penans anymore. The negative NGOs will then lose their business,” he said.

The deputy chief minister said these NGOs were taking advantage of the plight of the less than three per cent of the entire Penan population who were still nomadic.

“They (negative NGOs) are living off the misery of the few, and manufactured lies. This is what we must fight.

“I have known the Penan community for more than 40 years. They are striving for advancement. Only less than three per cent are still nomadic.

“And it is this three per cent that the negative NGOs speak up for. Is this a fair representation when we have another 97 per cent of Penans who have settled down?” he asked.

He said most of the Penans were successful people after they had followed government programmes to get them out of poverty.

He said the role model for the Penans was entre-preneur Datuk Hasan Sui while the role model for the Penan villages was the one at Suai in Ulu Niah where most of its residents were driving twin-cab 4WDs.

“As the Penans are members of the Dayak community, I do not want to see them being exploited,” he said.

On the opposition’s pressure for the report to be released after almost a year, Jabu said the opposition’s comments over Penan affairs were subjective and most of them were based on hearsay. “They did not cover the interior. But we (the government officials) visited, observed and made comments based on facts because we would like to be fair to all parties,” he added.