CONTRACEPTIVES are being forced on Orang Asli women, a group of indigenous people from Perak wrote in a memorandum to the prime minister today.

“Mothers are forced to take birth control through contraceptive shots with the reasoning that mothers are giving birth without control,” read the memorandum from the Temiar Orang Asli of Hulu Perak, Gerik and North Sungai Siput .

The group of 40 people raised this and several other issues during a visit to Parliament today.

The memorandum was submitted to Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad care of Department of Orang Asli Development director-general Prof Dr Juli Edo.

Environmental destruction and forced Islamisation were also listed on the missive as being among the Orang Asli’s woes.

The group said the blockades they erected to fend off loggers were daily demolished.

“Our daily life is disrupted. We can’t focus on farming or improving our lives because we spend every day manning and rebuilding our blockades.

“We prioritise protecting the forest on our traditional land because we don’t want the same thing that happened in Kuala Koh to happen to our community,” said Zimah Omar, from Kampung Tasek Cunex. 

In Kuala Koh, 15 people of the Bateq tribe died and more than a hundred other tribespeople were treated at the hospital for a mysterious sickness over a span of two months.

While the authorities pinned the sickness down to measles, medical experts, academics and activists who have worked with the community said the degraded environment the tribe lives in due to pesticides from oil palm plantation and mining was the root cause of their ill health.

Meanwhile, the Temiar group today also alleged that Islam was being forced upon Orang Asli community by teaching it to Orang Asli students in schools even if they were not Muslims and against their parents’ wishes.

“Unknowingly, our religion has been registered as Islam in our identity cards even when we have never converted.

“Now our children are taught Islam and forced to fast in school against our wishes. It is as if we do not have the freedom to choose our religion. Not only are we slowly losing our traditional land, we are also losing our identity,” Anjang Aluej from Kampung Sungai Papan said.

Their other concerns were the bullying, discrimination and insults Orang Asli children faced in schools, including from teachers. 

The memorandum listed seven recommendations for the prime minister, which are as follows:

- Gazette Orang Asli traditional land using community mapping;

- Stop all environmental destruction;

- Acknowledge and respect indigenous traditional knowledge and systems;

- Build primary schools close to each village; 

- Send sincere and qualified teachers to Orang Asli schools;

- Pay fair compensation for land taken for commercial use; and

- Comply with all articles of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. – July 9, 2019.