Justice for the Penan women who have repeatedly cried rape appears to be elusive.
COMMENT
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.
Section 375(c) of the Penal Code states that obtaining a sexual relationship by pretending to “marry” a woman when the perpetrator is already married, amounts to “misconception of fact” and is in fact, rape.
Despite pleading for help from the Bukit Aman police and the National Task Force, Bibi received none. This despite the fact that the Task Force report confirmed the rapes had taken place. Bibi ended up as Ah Hing’s wife, bearing him three children, in 2006, 2008 and 2010.
It is a shame that despite Bibi placing her trust in the police and the National Task Force, both abandoned responsibility. Bibi failed to free herself from Ah Hing. The police meanwhile never arrested Ah Hing who instead took Bibi to police stations in Long Lama and Marudi in September 2009 to lodge new reports denying she was raped by him.
The PSG had been told by villagers in middle Baram that Ah Hing had accompanied the police to another village in middle Baram to pressure another Penan girl, aged 18, to withdraw her report. This teenager and her family in all their courage refused to cower.
There is no doubt left that the manner in which the police handled Bibi’s complaint has tainted the image of this profession. The police as well as the newspapers were the least bothered to verify the facts that Ah Hing was never Bibi’s husband.
If all this was not painful enough for Bibi, the police closed their investigation following Bibi’s retraction. Interhill, a logging company, in its internal investigation found no evidence of sexual misconduct, leaving Ah Hing free to claim Bibi as his “wife” although bigamy is a serious crime for non-Muslims in Malaysia.
When questioned, Sarawak police chief Mohmad Salleh denied that police were protecting the rapist from the politically-connected logging companies.
“When I am asked about this, I become emotional. The police don’t hide facts. We have tried everything we could but the victims refuse to cooperate,” he had then claimed.
Police not willing to help Penans
The Borneo Post in its report quoted Mohmad as saying that the police visited nine logging camps, interviewing 72 witnesses. The police made three visits to the “jungle” to investigate the findings of the National Task Force report.
Mohmad, however, refused to explain why the police merely interviewed the loggers. According to the Penan communities, the police never visited any of the rape survivors.
“The real problem lies with the victims themselves. They are not giving proper cooperation to the police,” Mohmad was quoted as saying.
Proper cooperation? According to the PSG, two of the survivors gathered all the courage and travelled to the foreign land of Kuala Lumpur to lodge reports while others gave the police their full cooperation.
Now, will the police bother clarifying as to why it went back on its commitment which was made by the then Inspector-General of Police Musa Hassan in January 2009 to conduct a joint visit with the PSG to the affected communities?
What the police did instead was unforgiveable – they proposed to use logging camps as a base, bringing the rape survivors to the same camps where some Penan girls said they been abducted by loggers and used the logging vehicles for transport.
Obviously, the police had no sincere wish in investigating the case. In the end, the police withdrew using the excuse that they had no funds for the visit.
“The absence of positive support from state authorities in investigating and finding solutions to grievances has undermined the trust of communities like the Penans in the authorities and has left them even more defenceless and vulnerable,” the PSG had said in its mission’s report which was released on July 6, 2010.
On July 8, 2010, Deputy Chief Minister Alfred Jabu, in responding to PSG’s mission findings, parroted the police chief’s demands for the Penan survivors to lodge further reports.
“We are open. Give us the proof… we will investigate,” he had said.
New blood hope for Penans
Yong, Ting and Chiew, the DAP greenhorns, hopefully can take it upon themselves to assist the Penan women earn the much-delayed justice for a crime shielded politically.
The Penan women and girls have suffered enough at the hands of the timber loggers, the police and the unscrupulous government under Chief Minister Taib Mahmud.
In their desperation, the PSG turned to Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak’s wife Rosmah Mansor for intervention but she too refused any help.
Now that Taib has once again “bought” his way into lording over the people of Sarawak, the Penan women and girls have two options – to continue fighting against all odds for the much elusive justice or to keep silent, for good.
COMMENT
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.
Section 375(c) of the Penal Code states that obtaining a sexual relationship by pretending to “marry” a woman when the perpetrator is already married, amounts to “misconception of fact” and is in fact, rape.
Despite pleading for help from the Bukit Aman police and the National Task Force, Bibi received none. This despite the fact that the Task Force report confirmed the rapes had taken place. Bibi ended up as Ah Hing’s wife, bearing him three children, in 2006, 2008 and 2010.
It is a shame that despite Bibi placing her trust in the police and the National Task Force, both abandoned responsibility. Bibi failed to free herself from Ah Hing. The police meanwhile never arrested Ah Hing who instead took Bibi to police stations in Long Lama and Marudi in September 2009 to lodge new reports denying she was raped by him.
The PSG had been told by villagers in middle Baram that Ah Hing had accompanied the police to another village in middle Baram to pressure another Penan girl, aged 18, to withdraw her report. This teenager and her family in all their courage refused to cower.
There is no doubt left that the manner in which the police handled Bibi’s complaint has tainted the image of this profession. The police as well as the newspapers were the least bothered to verify the facts that Ah Hing was never Bibi’s husband.
If all this was not painful enough for Bibi, the police closed their investigation following Bibi’s retraction. Interhill, a logging company, in its internal investigation found no evidence of sexual misconduct, leaving Ah Hing free to claim Bibi as his “wife” although bigamy is a serious crime for non-Muslims in Malaysia.
When questioned, Sarawak police chief Mohmad Salleh denied that police were protecting the rapist from the politically-connected logging companies.
“When I am asked about this, I become emotional. The police don’t hide facts. We have tried everything we could but the victims refuse to cooperate,” he had then claimed.
Police not willing to help Penans
The Borneo Post in its report quoted Mohmad as saying that the police visited nine logging camps, interviewing 72 witnesses. The police made three visits to the “jungle” to investigate the findings of the National Task Force report.
Mohmad, however, refused to explain why the police merely interviewed the loggers. According to the Penan communities, the police never visited any of the rape survivors.
“The real problem lies with the victims themselves. They are not giving proper cooperation to the police,” Mohmad was quoted as saying.
Proper cooperation? According to the PSG, two of the survivors gathered all the courage and travelled to the foreign land of Kuala Lumpur to lodge reports while others gave the police their full cooperation.
Now, will the police bother clarifying as to why it went back on its commitment which was made by the then Inspector-General of Police Musa Hassan in January 2009 to conduct a joint visit with the PSG to the affected communities?
What the police did instead was unforgiveable – they proposed to use logging camps as a base, bringing the rape survivors to the same camps where some Penan girls said they been abducted by loggers and used the logging vehicles for transport.
Obviously, the police had no sincere wish in investigating the case. In the end, the police withdrew using the excuse that they had no funds for the visit.
“The absence of positive support from state authorities in investigating and finding solutions to grievances has undermined the trust of communities like the Penans in the authorities and has left them even more defenceless and vulnerable,” the PSG had said in its mission’s report which was released on July 6, 2010.
On July 8, 2010, Deputy Chief Minister Alfred Jabu, in responding to PSG’s mission findings, parroted the police chief’s demands for the Penan survivors to lodge further reports.
“We are open. Give us the proof… we will investigate,” he had said.
New blood hope for Penans
Yong, Ting and Chiew, the DAP greenhorns, hopefully can take it upon themselves to assist the Penan women earn the much-delayed justice for a crime shielded politically.
The Penan women and girls have suffered enough at the hands of the timber loggers, the police and the unscrupulous government under Chief Minister Taib Mahmud.
In their desperation, the PSG turned to Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak’s wife Rosmah Mansor for intervention but she too refused any help.
Now that Taib has once again “bought” his way into lording over the people of Sarawak, the Penan women and girls have two options – to continue fighting against all odds for the much elusive justice or to keep silent, for good.
No comments:
Post a Comment