TO OVERTHROW A TYRANNY

By : ARTI SAN

LAND Investment has great potential to help indigenous people work themselves out of poverty, but the current rush for land is leaving the people worse off. Global action is crucial if we are to protect the indigenous people from losing what little they have for the profits of a few, and builds toward a tomorrow where everyone has enough.

Since the intrusion of the plantation industry into NCR (Native Customary Rights) land in Sabah, there has been an inequitable distribution of land in the state.

Thousands of indigenous people throughout the state have been persuaded to part with their land on the basis of uplifting the state economy and in the name of wealthy land grabbers.

Many of the state’s poorest indigenous people are being worse off by unprecedented pace of land deals and BN’s cronyism competition for land acquisition. This blinkered scramble for land by investors is ignoring the people who live on the land and rely on it to survive.

Many of the land deals are in fact ‘Land Grabs’ where rights and needs of the people previously living on the land are ignored, leaving them homeless and without land to grow enough food and make a living.

Today, the indigenous people make up over 60% of the state’s population however they hold less than 10% of the land. 80% of the state land is owned by less than 5% of the population. 18% of Sabah’s population lives in extreme poverty with an estimated 50-60% of these extremely poor people being indigenous.

It seemed that the present BN government has not awaken by the age of reason and enlightenment. In some cases local investors such as BN politicians claim to have experience in agricultural production, many may only be purchasing and land grabbing speculatively anticipating price increases in the coming years, a practice known as ‘land banking’ and consequently sold their ‘grabs’ to plantation companies, at the same time,to avoid corruption scrutiny. This is a typical occurrence in the worse off region affected by land grabbing.

Pertinent to Sabah’s NCR land issue, as if shedding the past and creating the future, the BN government decided to introduce a new land deal, the so called “unenacted” ‘communal land’, a ploy to divert attention away from a facts in dispute rather than addressing it directly. This is a form of hypocrisy and an irrational conclusion that rest on premises that do not support redress on NCR.

When we look closely at BN’s human decision and behaviour, the BN government has no natural guide to the truth, nor does it naturally loves the truth, what the BN loves is it selves, what serves it, what flatters it, what give it what it wants and what strike down and destroys whatever threatens it.

On the other hand, the BN’s pursuit for ruling power, ulterior desire, and to make possible the acquisition of a lifelong colonization of the state of Sabah, from the perspective of socio-political phenomena, the period considered to have begun close to 30 years ago and had progressed from a long period of doubtful tradition and tyranny. After all, the complicated assets and financial undertaking of the federation is in the vault of the Malaysia Government.

At the end of the day, the indigenous people should regroup and unite to sought for formal recognition of their rights as native and the establishment of a decolonised state and a genuinely democratic federation and through electoral demands for a new era of good governance.