A NATIVE land rights group, Save Rivers, has claimed that police assaulted and hit women, burned cultural artifacts, confiscated and burned handphones, looted and stole from ethnic Ibans protestors in an operation to dismantle a blockade they had erected in Mukah, Sarawak.

The ethnic Ibans from six longhouses in Ulu Kelawit, Tatau in central Sarawak had reportedly erected the blockade in an attempt to stop a quarrying company and an oil palm plantation from polluting a river they are dependent on for drinking and their farms.

Save Rivers chairman, Peter Kallang, said 11 “community leaders”, including a woman, were also arrested in the October 25 police operation to dismantle the blockades.

Kallang, narrating the experience of woman protester Imuk Imang from Rumah Tandang said: “the police came without any warning and without telling us”.

“They collected our handphones and they were wearing masks. One of them shouted ‘arrest them, arrest them’.”

Save Rivers, which spearheaded the successful campaign to stop the construction of the Baram hydroelectric dam, said the longhouse folks have since gone to Mukah town to gather at the police station to protest the arrests and to demand the release of the 11.

Kallang in a statement said the three companies, all subsidiaries of Ta Ann Holdings Bhd – one of the so-called Big 6 timber companies in the state – have been working in concession areas in Ulu Kelawit, Tatau since 2012.

He said the oil palm company, Cipta Sendirian Bhd had initially compensated the villagers for their land, but has since discontinued the compensation payments.

“After the oil palm company came in, Stone Head Sendirian Bhd, the sandstone rock quarry company, started operations in the vicinity.

“An additional subsidiary of Ta Ann began another monoculture tree plantation.

“These companies, and particularly the operations of the rock quarry, have destroyed the Sg Besangin, their (the Iban) river source,” Kallang said.

He said the river became “extremely poisonous and polluted” and destroyed their paddy fields.

“Then the river completely dried up,” he said.

“Through the loss of their water source, villagers have lost their source of livelihood as they are no longer able to grow crops or fish in the river.

“They have also lost their source of food and drinking water.

“When the villagers began to notice the impact of the Ta Ann companies had on their rivers they wrote letters to their headmen and the companies, asking to have a discussion about how to fix the situation.”

Kallang said the companies never responded to the villagers’ letters.

He claimed the companies instead only paid compensations to their headmen “who in turn sided with the companies”.

“With the headmen on the side of the companies, the villagers had no other choice but to peacefully protest through a blockade that they began in early October.

Police, according to Kallang, arrested a man on October 20 in connection with the dispute.

The man, identified by Kallang as Nasar Nawing from Km16 Jalan Tatau, was subsequently released fours days later, a day before the dismantling operation.

“We were not looting, we were not violent, but we were there to protect our land, our livelihood and to protect our rivers from being destroyed,” Kallang reported Nasar as saying.

The Iban longhouse folks have been holding a vigil at the Mukah police station since yesterday, offering prayers and holding the traditional ceremonies of “miring” and “taboh”. – October 30, 2018.