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KijangMas Perkasa
Yesterday at 1:51pm ·
Blood Timber
I've said it umpteen times, the lebai jadians and ularmaks voted to power time and again on the platform of heavenly delusions are the biggest threats to Kelantan's socio-economic well-being. Everything they touched ultimately morphed into utter devastation . . . a far cry from the utopian earthly paradise promised to the gullible in their ceramah circus. The environmentally catastrophic blood timber rackets involving out-of-state thugs is but a symptom of this pathetic mismanagement by a bunch of bungling fools masquerading as self-proclaimed messiahs. Pristine rivers and waterways; irreplaceable 130 million year old rainforests; unique limestone, quartz and karst outcrops dating back up to 400 million years; fragile coastal habitats and endangered endemic fauna . . . are methodically destroyed as the mullahs -- who couldn't count beyond their ten fingers and the odd toe -- got way over their semutars in dealing with criminal elements in the timber extraction business.
These timber thugs -- financed ultimately by Asian vice rackets and dirty money -- walloped everything in their path . . . and then some. Sure, there are concession agreements with detailed extraction methodologies and environmental safeguards . . . BUT . . . for most cases they ain't worth the paper they are printed on due to lack of State government monitoring and enforcement. Hence, verdant equatorial forests with pristine old growth heavy hardwoods -- chengal, balau, merbau -- plus medium and light hardwoods -- Keruing, Kempas, Kapur, Mengkulang, Tualang, Meranti, Mersawa, Nyatoh, Sepetir, Jelutong -- are obliterated in a scorched earth extraction technique that left nothing but bare hills and mud-chocked rivers in it's wake.
Based on my visit last year-end to the environmental disaster zones, I can see the State . . . the Rakyat . . . will ultimately lose far more than the relative pittance it will gain from this blood timber racket. The scandalous clearcutting destroys every single stand of timber, leaving a barren wasteland waiting to be turned into mountains of mud come monsoon season. And then comes the annual cycle of floods, sufferings, pleadings for aid in a now predictable disaster circus underpinned by a foreboding sense of hopelessness plus the convenient blaming of God for these very man-made maladies. And yes, the same lebai jadians and ularmaks will have their solat hajats and assorted jampians as they looked up towards the overcast sky and ask “Why? . . . my Lord . . . why us?” Yeah wali wannabes, the answer to the “why?” is in the mirror. Look at it. See the beady eyed ignoramus? Yup, that’s the answer to the “why?”
Add to these bungling mullahs . . . the corrupt enforcement people in various agencies. The line between hired thugs and enforcement types often gets blurred deep in the wretched, muddy jungle trails . . . where just about anyone can don a RM35.95 luminious “POLIS” vest and take the law into his own hands.
Chengal retails for RM6,000 to RM10,000 per tonne at the sawmill. Merbau and Red Balau at half that. These are superpremium hardwoods, truly God's gift to humankind . . . and cannot be readily cultivated in man-made forest farms and such. The thieving scums nowadays clearcut every single stand of these hardwoods to maximize profits . . . even youngish ones . . . utterly devastating Kelantan's recoverable reserves of these valuable commodity.
In my estimation, hundreds of millions if not billions of ringgit annually are raked in from this blood timber by organized rackets empowered by mountains of cash. And it is not just illegal logging. Look at Tanah Merah, Kuala Kerai, Jeli, Dabong, Gua Musang and other towns of Kelantan's resource rich hinterland. Look at the shiny new souped up 4x4s, the new hotels charging hourly rates, the swarms of customers in tyre and auto accessory shops, the new restaurants and warongs mushrooming in these towns. These are the manifestations of a booming underground economy underpinned by blood timber, unlicensed gold mining, and the wholesale extraction of resources . . . from iron ore and limestone to manganese and feldspar.
The State gets almost nothing in royalties and taxable revenues from these activities because the lebai jadians and ularmaks holding political power are too preoccupied preaching about the afterlife in their downriver comfort zones. Hence we have a situation where a cash strapped State government is literally at the mercy of rogue tycoons and shady characters able to dish out a couple million ringgits in fees and royalties to secure concessions worth hundreds of millions if not billions of ringgit.
This in a nutshell is the predicament faced by the Oghé Kelaté in our resource rich homeland . . . a problem ultimately of our own creation.
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Now . . . I have nothing but sympathy for the Orang Asli. The problems plaguing these ancient Guardians of the Rainforests are multifarious and intertwined with a myriad of other socio-economic issues, including being suckered into becoming disposable pawns in the dirty politics of the lowlanders.
The role of the Orang Asli in our early history is lost . . . although tantalizing anecdotes survived in ancient manuscripts on the heroics of the various tribes in enforcing territorial claims and upholding the sovereign legitimacy of many Malay Kingdoms in the deep hinterland. As an example, the upstream (hulu) political reach of the Patani Kingdom during its Golden Era (of the four queens, c.1580-1670) was made possible by military alliances with well-organized Semang tribes of the upper Patani and Teluban river systems. In the early 1600s, the tin and gold rich state of Raman (now upper Perak/southern Yala) became contentious territory between the Patani and Perak Kingdoms. Forces of both Malay Kingdoms clashed repeatedly in the forest watershed areas. And both sides were bolstered by indispensable Orang Asli allies . . . jungle warriors feared as stealthy fighters, deadly poisoned blowpipe snipers and expert jungle trekkers.
Patani received support from the main Semang tribes – the Jahai, Kensiu and Kintaq – while Perak was allied with the Semang’s mortal rivals, the Senoi of the Temiar, Semai and Lanoh tribes. The greater martial prowess and survival know-how of the Semangs in the impenetrable jungle of the contested territory tilted the rivalry to Patani’s favor . . . and for the subsequent three centuries (until the Siamese colonization of 1902 formalized by the 1909 Anglo-Siamese Treaty), the people of Raman maintained allegiance to the Patani Kingdom although their land lies mostly in the Perak River watershed.
Again, the pivotal role of the Orang Asli in the history of the Malay Kingdoms of the Peninsular are now long forgotten as our past gets smothered by literary fairy-tales tinged with romanticized religiosity concocted from the fertile imagination of populist scribes catering to contemporary socio-religious imperatives. |
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Post time 6-10-2016 10:45 PM
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