COMMENT | Prejudice, powerful foreigners, and Penan citizenship struggle
COMMENT | When we visited Long Menging in November last year, word spread to neighbouring villages.
On the second day, five families from Kampung Bahagia from Long Napir in the district of Limbang, Sarawak travelled several hours with help from a village headperson who chauffeured them to meet us.
Sia Igut and his wife Gasi Mugut said they heard there was a person who could help with identity cards and registrations. They also mistook the reporter as an elected representative, a 'Yang Berhormat'.
Their daughter, Adeline Sia, born in 2010, received her birth certificate but her citizenship status was stated as “yet to be determined”.
Adeline’s birth certificate also erroneously...
COMMENT | When we visited Long Menging in November last year, word spread to neighbouring villages.
On the second day, five families from Kampung Bahagia from Long Napir in the district of Limbang, Sarawak travelled several hours with help from a village headperson who chauffeured them to meet us.
Sia Igut and his wife Gasi Mugut said they heard there was a person who could help with identity cards and registrations. They also mistook the reporter as an elected representative, a 'Yang Berhormat'.
Their daughter, Adeline Sia, born in 2010, received her birth certificate but her citizenship status was stated as “yet to be determined”.
Adeline’s birth certificate also erroneously listed information on her parents as “Information not obtained.”
Sayak Magut, 54, his wife and their three children including his daughter-in-law travelled on foot for an hour to Long Menging to inquire about his son’s application.
Magut’s son Apui Sayak, now 31, had applied for an amendment on his birth certificate in September 2019 for his citizenship status to be changed from “not determined” to “citizen”.
A reply from the National Registration Department (NRD) last August stated that his application for the amendment was rejected because his parents never legally registered their marriage although a certified copy of his parents’ marriage certificate was attached with his application.
Ironically, Apui’s younger sisters, Ranau and Luna, were both registered as citizens in their birth certificates.
Even when Penans can get their births registered, the information contains errors that cause unnecessary trouble.
For example, Josely Robert, 16, was falsely registered as a female. He was born Dec 21, 2004 to Robert Geraji and Tusan John at Limbang Hospital.
His birth certificate also states that he is of "Punan" ethnicity, instead of Penan.
The Penan Empowerment Network (Penan) led by Elia Bit alleged that the NRD officers who go to these villages during outreach programmes are prejudiced.
“A few Penans came to me claiming they were accused by NRD officers of cheating. They were accused of being Indonesians and not native Penan which is hurtful and disrespectful to them,” she said.
Meanwhile, there has been widespread speculation that Sarawak Governor Abdul Taib Mahmud’s Syrian-born wife Ragad Waleed Alkurdi and her two children from a previous relationship were awarded citizenship status in record time.
In a Malaysiakini article, columnist Francis Paul Siah noted that citizenship papers awarded to Ragad and her kin in 2017 list them as Melanau bumiputera.
The NRD declined to comment on that claim but the inevitable question remains: Why are natives born in Sarawak not recognised as citizens when foreigners can get instant recognition as bumiputera citizens?
Related articles:
In Sarawak, hundreds of indigenous bumiputera are stateless
Legal hurdles stand between the Penan and citizenship
This article was written as part of the Kiniacademy Investigative Journalism program. For more stories like this, visit Kiniacademy’s website FIJIasia.
The views expressed here are those of the authors/contributors and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.
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