Man with 'kebal' power survives knife attack
A group of seven men described as gangsters and supposedly employed by a Sarawak oil palm plantation company in Gedong attacked a 66-year-old man recently when he arrived at his farm in what is believed to be a land ownership case.
A group of seven men described as gangsters and supposedly employed by a Sarawak oil palm plantation company in Gedong attacked a 66-year-old man recently when he arrived at his farm in what is believed to be a land ownership case.
Jara’ee Mathor of Kampung Melayu Hulu, Gedong in Simunjan district, about two hours by road from Kuching, accompanied by Musa Jais, 40, his nephew, had left early morning to go to his farm to collect wood.
On reaching the farm, he saw a group of seven men in a car. The group was said to be working for Hydroflow Sdn Bhd, a company given a 2,182ha plantation land lease by the state government for planting oil palm.
One by one, his alleged assailants came out from their car and confronted Jara’ee, bringing out long knives that looked similar to samurai swords.They shouted at the old man: “Kamu mau mati?” (You want to die?) and started attacking him.
His nephew who was nearby came to the rescue of his uncle and the group of men also started to attack him as well.
Discharged the following day
Local NGO Sarawak Dayak Iban Association (Sadia) secretary-general Nicholas Mujah, who was later informed about the incident by Jara’ee by phone, told Malaysiakini that the attackers started to flee when they noticed that they could not do any bodily harm to Musa.
Musa is said to possess a certain power, which the Malays call “kebal”, and the knife attack could not do any bodily harm or injury to him.
Musa quickly made a dash to the nearest place to make a call to 999 and within an hour an ambulance from the Serian District Hospital arrived at the scene to take the wounded Jara’ee to hospital.
He was diagnosed by doctors to suffer from cerebral concussion and laceration wounds and was discharged the following day.
Later he was called by the Simunjan police station to make a statement. However, when he arrived at the police station on Friday morning, according to Mujah, Jara’ee was detained and released only late in the evening.
Apparently, his alleged assailants had told police that they were the ones who had been attacked by Jara’ee first.
The police had also detained some of the alleged assailants. They were released from police custody yesterday.
Land also planted with oil palm
Jara’ee is among 100 Malay landowners in Gedong whose claimed land ownership overlaps with the plantation land leased by the state government to the company.
About 90 of them have, however, already made a deal with the company, with the remaining nine refusing to be part of the deal.
Hydroflow’s plantation land - Lot 1226 Sedilu Land District - is located between Batang Sadong and Sungai Simunjan in one of the best oil palm growing areas to the south of Kuching.
It is said to be one of several plantation land with 60-year leases totalling about 16,500ha issued to companies linked to a Parti Pesaka Bumiputera (PBB) leader and state assistant minister Naroden Majais, known locally as “The King of Oil Palm” in Simunjan.
Naroden who hails from Gedong is one of the close confidantes of the Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud whose family wealth has been linked to lucrative state contracts, timber and plantation land leases and exposed in an Al Jazeera TV programme aired on Thursday night over Astro Channel 513 and repeated several times later the following day.
Taib has so far refused to comment on the TV programme.
