Evictus: I Got This Paper in My Hand Telling You to Move, So Move Already!

Oni wat ya kasig si odop to?

Hi and good day everyone.

I'm a day late for my deadline to submit my weekly material, but it was mostly because I was divided about the things I wanted to talk about. Really, a lot of things do happen on a day to day basis and that’s a lot of input to digest. But I think I’ve found a knock out topic yesterday.

I’m about to share with you guys the story of an Iban longhouse that is literally on the brink of annihilation. Somewhere out there in Ulu Niah, a 60 door longhouse has been issued an eviction letter. They have been ordered to move out of their homes before 26^th June 2012 and that was last Tuesday.

The longhouse I’m talking about is called Rumah Sigan (previously it was Rumah Umpol) and the reason for their huge predicament is that a local conglomerate called WTK was able to somehow magically change these people’s land from a native communal land into a state land.


If there was any kind of magic that I’d like to learn…it is definitely this one. One minute your land is yours, the next minute its mine, and how was that possible? Coz I got a piece of paper with some ink on it and a signature of a few people that says so!

That’s how it was possible. I mean its just plain preposterous, especially if you weigh the justification of this:

Rumah Sigan

 VERSUS

The Eviction Letter

I know that when land is declared state land, you end up becoming a squatter when you build your home over it. But come on, one minute this land was NCR and the next minute it was state land. My oh my…all of us should worry you know for the sake of our kampungs and longhouses. Because it this happened to them, it can surely happen to us too. Look at what’s already happened in Stenggang. 

But the funniest part of all this dilemma in Rumah Sigan is that, the Eviction Letter was said to be written by the district SAO. Oh dear, I didn't know SAOs can do that these days. If Bau people see an SAO walking around town (office hour or non office hour), you know you better buy him a drink. That's one guy you'd wanna make friends with. By the way, I got the article relating to this issue from:

http://hornbillunleashed.wordpress.com/2012/06/28/31401/

If you read it there, you'll notice that that article even printed out the poor SAO's name. Oh...how I wouldn't want to be in his shoes right now. The HornbillUnleashed and Sarawak Report  site has got full coverage on this particular story, they even uploaded  some video streams of the distressed folks. So I'm not gonna go over the whole agenda.

My reason to write about this specific tale is just to plant a thought for everyone to ask themselves...why is all this happening so often these days? You got this case, then the Rumah Nyawin case in Bintulu last year, then the Bidayuh in Tebedu case..you know, the one where all these guys posed for the papers wielding parangs and all that.


How strange, everyone in the pic looked so darn jolly? If you don't remember, the picture below has surely got to remind you! Hahaha.

Rargh hahaha!! Burn, baby burn!! And..a..one..and..a...two...and POSE!

I imagine a couple of hours prior to the 'festivities', the guys in the pics were just sitting at their back lawn...grilling some oyuok, drinking beer, then drank more beer...until one person would say, "Jak to' nyouh kem balak inuh jak!"

"Hoooraaaaah!!!" everyone said. And they went and they did it. Such fun ain't it? I wish my weekends were like that. 

So why is all these land infiltrations, suka-suka hati logging activities and evictions becoming more and more common? Was it always like this 20 or 30 years ago? Was it because the news was so monopolized by certain quarters that it had to wait for the creation of the internet for ordinary people like you and me to know the sufferings faced by fellow ordinary people in the same state as us? 

I mean, TV was already around in the 80s, and newspapers were in circulation much earlier than that. I doubt that things like these evictions didn't happen 20 years ago. I believe they did, but back then news of this kind was probably only spread through word of mouth. Just goes to show  how much we are indebted to the inventors of the computer and the internet. But now that we are more aware of stories like this...the main question is, what can we do about it? 

What if it happened to you? What would you do about it?