Dayak place in the sun

The onus is on the Sarawak and Federal Governments to do something about the Dayak plight in Malaysia.

KOTA KINABALU: Dayaks are increasingly coming around to the view that Malaysia in Borneo was a bad British idea degenerating into a situation where they have exchanged one colonial master for another.

They want the Sarawak and Federal Governments to ensure that they as a nation in Borneo have a place in the Malaysian sun before they decide that “enough is enough”.

“Putrajaya should drop its empty rhetoric that there’s a place for everyone in the Malaysian sun,” said the Dayak National Congress (DNC) in a statement on the 51st anniversary of the Federation of Sabah and Sarawak with the peninsula.

“We are Orang Asal, covered by Article 153 of the Federal Constitution, and yet left grudgingly with the crumbs.”

The DNC cannot understand why others would want to grab what rightfully belongs to the Orang Asal under the Federal Constitution. These range from the Bible to NCR land, scholarships, government jobs, places in institutions of higher learning and opportunities created by the government to do business.

“We are even in great danger of losing our heads,” said the DNC statement. “There have been calls by Muslim NGOs in the peninsula to chop off our heads on the ground that we are infidels.”

“The Federal Government, by its silence and inaction on such matters, seem to be condoning and encouraging these Muslim NGOs.”

There’s no religion in Sarawak, reminded the DNC, under the Malaysia Agreement 1963 and related constitutional documents.

The DNC recalled that Dayaks were in fact opposed in 1962/1963 to the idea of Malaysia in Borneo on the grounds that it brought back bad memories of Brunei rule, and there were fears that there would be Islamisation, economic exploitation and insecurity.

“These fears now appear to have been justified by the march of events since 1963,” said the DNC.

The bottomline, continued the DNC, is that Dayaks don’t want to continue being at the bottom of the proverbial “dung heap of humanity”, gradually losing their land, and forced to eak out a meager living as hewers of wood and drawers of water for others.

“The onus is on the Sarawak and Federal Governments to do something about the Dayak plight in Malaysia and not continue to compromise the security of the Federation,” said the DNC. “We will no longer put up with Umno’s intolerance of Dayak dissent.”