A 62-YEAR-OLD Sarawak housewife believed she would have been dead by now from the cancer in her right breast if it had not been for the Indonesian passport she was forced to take.

The document enabled Mebpung Akup, a Lun Bawang from Long Lutok, Lawas, to travel from this the state’s northern-most district to Miri for treatment and surgery.

Despite being a Sarawak native, Mebpung has been repeatedly denied a MyKad and as such would have been unable to make the journey without her Indonesian identification.

Lawas is sandwiched by Sabah to the north and the Brunei district of Temburong to the south.

The unique road trip from Lawas to Miri takes people through Temburong in Brunei to Limbang in Sarawak, then back into Brunei again for the 230km trip to Miri.

The mother of five – her youngest child in his 30s – first applied for her MyKad in 1981 with the National Registration Department (NRD) mobile team at Long Tuma, and again in 2003 and 2016.

However, her 2003 application had “expired”, she was told, an explanation she found rather baffling.

Her 2016 application was rejected because she could not prove her place of birth.

Mebpung insists she is from Sarawak, and indeed is the only one of seven brother and sisters without a MyKad.

“My husband made every effort to get my IC and they still they tell me to wait,” Mebpung said in a video appeal to the Home Ministry.

“The only answer I get from the National Registration Department is ‘wait’.

“Wait, wait, wait, was all they could tell me and I am still waiting. I still don’t have an answer to ease my anxiety,” she said in the video message.

“Whatever Lawas NRD asked me to do, I have done and furnished them with everything. The officers asked for copies of my siblings’ MyKad, and I provided them.

“I have even given them my children’s birth certificates, as requested.”

Agnes Padan, the social activist who is assisting Mebpung, said her case is not unique among people living in the remote interior along the border with Indonesia.

“In the 60s, there was no road from Long Lutok to Lawas. Then, it was a week’s walk to register births or deaths, or other official business,” Padan said.

She said Mebpung’s father was Iban and a border scout. He was likely unable to get the leave required to make the trek to Lawas to register Mebpung’s birth, given the tension with Indonesia at the time.

This tension would boil over into Konfrontasi in 1963 and Mebpung’s father was in the thick of the action.

Padan said Mebpung was “forced to” apply for an Indonesian passport out of desperation.

Apparently , her eldest daughter was living on the peninsula with her soldier husb and implored her to fly over and look after her in her post-natal confinement, so Mebpung had to act quickly.

Padan said the move might have complicated Mebpung’s MyKad and citizenship application, but Mebpung felt she did the right thing.

Ironically, the passport would be her saviour in her hour of need.

In 2017, she felt she had a lump in her right breast.

The initial diagnosis at Lawas Hospital was that it could be cancer but since the hospital had no cancer specialist or the equipment to do a proper diagnosis, she was referred to Miri.

In November 2021, Mebpung used her Indonesian passport to get to Miri for an MRI scan and biopsy.

The result the following month showed she had stage 4 cancer, and she went under the knife for a mastectomy almost immediately.

The passport had also enabled her to keep her regular check-up appointments in Miri and chemotherapy at Likas Hospital, a cancer hospital in Kota Kinabalu.

Nonetheless, Mebpung is still asking the question why the NRD and Home Ministry is denying her right to citizenship.

Padan said it does not make sense to harbour any suspicions that she could be born on the other side of the border because her father was a Malaysian uniformed soldier at a time when the two nations were exchanging hostilities.

She said Mebpung and her siblings are willing to take a DNA test to prove their identity. – May 6, 2023.