PASIR Gudang MP Hassan Abdul Karim said it’s such an irony that Malaysia, which imports more than RM50 billion annually in food for its people and livestock, had deemed it fit to evict farmers producing 60 tonnes of vegetables daily.

In a Facebook post today, the PKR lawmaker, who is a member of the Special Committee on Food Security, said what the Perak government did to the vegetable farmers in Kanthan was absurd.

In evicting farmers from land the state government said they had encroached on last Tuesday, an activist from Parti Sosialis Malaysia sustained injuries after being allegedly assaulted by an Ipoh Lands and Mines Department officer.

The farmers had attempted to obstruct personnel from the department from entering the agricultural area to evict them.

“These farmers were producing 60 tonnes of vegetables daily for the people. They cultivated corn, spinach, palm oil, starfruit, and green onions on a 10.1ha area.

“The government should have supported the productive efforts of these farmers, whether at the federal or state level. Instead, the farmers were forcibly evicted, mistreated by the authorities, and detained.

“These farmers had been working on these lands, growing vegetables for three generations,” he said in the post.

Hassan said the destruction of the crops and eviction of the farmers “should not have happened in the prime minister’s own constituency”.

He said Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, known for consistently upholding the rights of the poor and working class, might not be aware of the injustices happening to the people in his own area as he could be “engrossed in national administration and international affairs related to Israel’s attacks on the Palestinians in Gaza”.

Hassan also said the farmers had gone to parliament last month hoping to meet their elected representative but were instead forced from the parliament building by the police.

Anwar is the MP for Tambun, which covers Kanthan.

“Poor people and rural farmers have become threats to the government,” he said.

He said the farmers had a memorandum for the prime minister but failed to meet him. It was instead surrendered to the deputy prime minister.

He said the memorandum was seeking an assurance they would not be evicted from the farmland they had been working on for years.

“They weren’t asking for land ownership. They weren’t asking for land grants.

“They only requested land leases to cultivate the land legally. They were not squatters; they were land settlers.”

Hassan said if the people of Palestine are demanding the return of their confiscated lands, the right to be free from Israel’s oppression, and the right to return to their homeland, then the farmers in Kanthan are similarly requesting permission to “continue growing vegetables, fruits, raising chickens and ducks, which they, their parents, and grandparents have worked on the land for 80 years”.

He hopes the prime minister and Agriculture and Food Security Minister Mohamad Sabu will intervene to stop the eviction and destruction of the food crops. – October 26, 2023.