ANTIDOTE Six Sarawakian parents from the Lun Bawang, Kelabit and Iban communities are infuriated that their children’s ethnic origin has been recorded as ‘Malay’ in official Education Department documents.

“Our religion is Christian. We are very upset…the school changed the status of our children to keturunan Melayu (of Malay origin) which is completely wrong and unacceptable,” the parents complained in a letter to William Ghani Bina, the president of the Sarawak Teachers’ Union. They demanded that this practice be investigated and stopped immediately.

The alarming discovery was made in the students’ mid-year and year-end report cards. The parents said the reason given by the Temenggong Datuk Murip School was that the change was part of “standard administrative procedure”.

BBaru Bian Sarawak PKR-leader at Bruno Manser commemorationaru Bian (left), a Lun Bawang lawyer and head of Sarawak PKR, told the press: “We have been approached by concerned native parents about the sudden change in status of their children in school report cards. The status I am referring to is their keturunan.

“According to these parents who made the complaint, their children, who are natives of Sarawak by birth, are now classified as keturunan Melayu instead of lain-lain (others) as previously practised.”

Baru Bian pointed out the parents are natives under Article 161A of the constitution, and cannot possibly be Malay as they are not Muslim, do not habitually speak Malay and do not conform to Malay customs, as required by Article 160.

He said one parent had told him that the status recorded as ‘Malay’ cannot be changed back “because it was already within the system and the education officer was not able to make the changes”.

Baru Bian echoed the concerns of the six parents, explaining that some bureaucrats might accept the new status as evidence of ‘back-door’ conversions to Islam.

“It has great implications in the future. If such status is not clarified and maintained, it can (imply) that a native person, once he or she is classified as a Malay in official school documents, is a Muslim by virtue of the definition of Article 160.”

He urged the Education Ministry to rectify this error.

“Why are native children now classified as Melayu or Malay in schools? We are afraid this may be the tip of the iceberg and we would like to alert other native parents to check the status of their children before the matter becomes irreversible.”

The ministry was unable to provide any immediate comment.

Cultural dislocation

Feelings have been running high in Sarawak’s blogosphere over the 10 strokes of the cane inflicted on 10-year-old Basil Beginda by an assistant principal in St Thomas’s School in Kuching, for taking rice fried with pork sausages to school early last month.

The Education Ministry initially denied the teacher had caned the boy for taking pork to school. The authorities then argued that the boy’s father, Beginda Minda, was Muslim, and therefore by extension, the boy was too.

But the state religious department could find no record of Beginda having converted to Islam. The teacher later apologised to the student and his mother.

The government’s infringement of religious freedom has touched a raw nerve in Sarawak’s traditionally tolerant and pluralistic society.

The BN ban on the use of the Arabic word for ‘God’ by non-Muslims has not yet been resolved, and bibles containing this word have been seized. Sarawakian Christians are angry over the new rules, since they have used the word for over a century in their prayer books.

Sarawakians are also cdayak of sarawakoncerned over the erosion of local languages by the nearly exclusive use of Malay in boarding schools - the only schools accessible to many poor rural Dayak students.

For example, Penan children in the hamlet of Pa’Tik have to walk two days to get to school in the Bario highlands, and rarely manage to visit their families at home. The teenagers are not encouraged to speak languages other than Malay to one another in school.

Even when the boarders are at home in Pa’Tik for term break, they argue and swear at one another in Malay, and listen to Malay rock music at high volume. Cultural dislocation is inevitable.

Many Sarawakians, including Baru Bian, speak of federal government policies perceived as neo-colonial. These include the erosion of religious freedom, unequal access to bumiputera or native privileges, and the marginalisation of local languages and cultures.

Most of all, they are angry at the impoverishment of ordinary Sarawakians. Sarawak receives only 5 percent of royalties on petroleum from its waters, and remains one of the poorest states in the federation.

“We are living under another form of colonialism, whereby the colonial power is in (Peninsular) Malaysia,” Baru Bian said in an interview with indigenous rights advocate, the Bruno Manser Fund, in January.

The eminent land rights lawyer has criticised state chief minister Abdul Taib Mahmud’s administration for being “under the dictate of Kuala Lumpur” and for having “shortchanged the ordinary people”.


KERUAH USIT is a human rights activist - ‘anak Sarawak, bangsa Malaysia’. This weekly column is an effort to provide a voice for marginalised Malaysians. Keruah Usit can be contacted at keruah_usit@yahoo.com