Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad recently defined Asian values as "an absence of extreme individualism, a sense of responsibility for the community, belief in strong family, reverence for education, frugality, hard work, national teamwork, a social contract between the people and the state, moral wholesomeness, a free but responsible press, a belief in citizens as stake holders, and respect for the environment".

At the opening of "Law and Land Development" seminar in Kuching on March 7, Sarawak Chief Minister Taib Mahmud called on urban Malays to accept the government's urban native customary rights (NCR) land development policies or become third class citizens.

Rural non-Muslim and Muslim Bumiputras already know too well what such land development has meant to their lives, by choice or otherwise. To add insult to injury, Taib praised rural communities who accepted, and supposedly benefitted from, the new NCR land development concept. A select few with the right connections may have benefitted, but a major portion of the rural population continues to live without basic amenities including health and educational facilities.

Land rights has always been a sensitive issue, more so to the indigenous people of Sarawak. The Dayak and Orang Ulu communities have their existence so much intertwined with their native customary land rights that it is often puzzling to them that land is seen as having nothing more than monetary value.

Land to Sarawak indigenous people is beyond monetary value - it provides for self-sufficiency and they take care of it for future generations, taking from the forest only what they need and ensuring that there is no wastage. Their values are of continuity, sustainability, harmony and balance.

Their lives are rich culturally and spiritually, but can benefit from improvement in basic necessities, not logging or mono-crop plantations which have only left a trail of despair and threatened their survival skills. Development is much needed, but the question is: development for whom?

It is an open secret that decades of logging have only enriched loggers and their well-connected bosses. When communities question land development in Sarawak, they are branded anti-development, anti-government or accused of wanting to remain third class citizens.

When they have protested, after being unable to secure dialogue and consultation, they have been arrested, imprisoned, beaten and even killed, as was the case when police opened fire in Bakong, Miri on Dec 20, 1997. Paramilitary forces, backed by helicopters and tear gas, have also been employed to break up peaceful Penan blockades (Sebatu and Ulu Baram, Miri in September 1993).

There are some 478 known arrests and imprisonment of various indigenous people between 1987 and 1994 and this continues. Imprisonment ranges from one day to nine months, while court hearings and trials take between five and 22 months.

NGO and community leaders continue to be victimised for speaking out. The former Sibu-based Institute for Community Education (more popularly known then as IPK) was deregistered in 1996 for participating in a campaign debating the need for the Bakun dam project.

NGO workersl and indigenous community leaders, as well as supporting lawyers and activists from Peninsula Malaysia have either been denied entry into Sarawak while Sarawakians have had their passports confiscated or not renewed.

Instead of assisting and discussing with communities how best to improve their living conditions and economic status, taking into consideration their need for land and forest resources for self-sufficiency, governments have licensed the forest away to loggers, extinguished NCR land for mono-crop plantations and called this 'development'.

Isn't non-sustainable logging feeding a wasteful international market? Does not mono-crop land use conform to Western dictates? Isn't globalisation an attempt to secure greater market access for the West's and Japan's culture of consumerism?

How about improving indigenous farming and encouraging more cooperatives, agroforestry and better community-based land and resource utilisation to reflect Asian values? How about a more decentralised and befitting education system and syllabus? How about more responsive and localised medical facilities instead of flying doctors servicing remote rural folks who are prescribed Panadol for all kinds of illnesses? Why not research and encourage indigenous medicine?

No, because the champions of Asian values view these communities as too backwards, not keeping up with time, science and technology, and not abreast with the new "e" culture and "k" society of 2020.

Ironically, Taib was quoted as saying that indigenous people on several Pacific islands own plenty of land but are poor because there is no non-native development of native land. Taib obviously chose not to see documentation by two international NGOs - the World Rainforest Movement and Forest Monitor. "High Stakes - The Need to Control Transnational Logging Companies: A Malaysian Case Study" (http://www.gn.apc.org/fmonitor/), published in August 1998, details environmental destruction, broken promises, loss of land and other negative effects of the non-native development.

There is enough academic research to support the importance of land to indigenous people, but no amount of academic research is able to convey this simple fact to non-thinking politicians, policy makers and the business sector. In a consumerist society, land is for making money.

Taib singled out urban Malay reserve land along the Sarawak River in Kuching, obviously angered by the refusal of affected land owners to vacate their land to allow a second bridge to be built. The affected families are descendants of the first Malays to settle in Kuching hundreds of years ago, and the disputed land is a historical and cultural heritage.

Taib also wants NCR landowners "to transform the rights to their land into much more tangible assets that can increase in value that can be transferable and that can fit into 'our' system of trade and business".

The self-professed champions of the Third World in Malaysia want development in their own style. They claim to know what is best for their people and use such self-righteous terms as "Asian values" to attack the West. But these same people ignore local values and insist people must change to progress.

Let us spare a thought for those facing the brunt of the state for their "anti-Asian values" right this very moment in Rengah, Sarawak where 19 villagers currently face charges of murder in a land dispute (Malaysiakini Feb 26/27). Let indigenous people's Asian values thrive!

CHENDANG HOLLIS is a freelance writer based in Sarawak