After NYE ordeal, Kit Siang moots blueprint to end Orang Asli poverty, isolation

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 1 ― DAP veteran Lim Kit Siang's first-hand experience yesterday at being cut off from the outside world at an isolated Orang Asli village has led to his proposal for a national conference and blueprint to end the indigenous community's poverty and isolation.

He said he left for a visit to Orang Asli settlements in Cameron highlands on Saturday and it was due to have ended yesterday, but the trip did not go as planned.

Lim said he was “trapped to spend 2019 New Year’s Eve at Kampong Orang Asli Semoi Lama, cut off from all access to the outside world” together with Pakatan Harapan's Bentong MP Wong Tack, Tanah Rata assemblyman Chiong Yoke Kong, former DAP Cameron Highlands candidate M. Manogaran and a convoy of 12 vehicles.

“This was my first experience in 77 years at being trapped at a place, cut off from all access to the outside world, which is particularly poignant in an age of instant communications where information travels at the speed of light,” he wrote in a statement from Felda Sungai Koyan in Cameron Highlands.

Lim also described the river crossing at Kampong Semoi Lama by driving through the river despite its strong currents to reach Orang Asli villages in Pos Lenyang and Pos Titom as another “unforgettable experience”.

Lim said these two unanticipated experiences vividly illustrate the former Barisan Nasional administration's alleged failures in the last six decades as federal government to uplift the Orang Asli community.

“It is a symbol that after six decades, the majority of Orang Asli communities are still cut off from the outside world when they should have already been brought into the mainstream of national development,” he said.

Lim said it was time to “time to wipe out Orang Asli poverty, backwardness and isolation after six decades of nation-building”.

Cameron Highlands is the federal constituency which DAP's Manogaran had narrowly lost by 597 votes to MIC vice-president C. Sivarraajh in the 14th general elections last May. Manogaran successfully contested the Cameron Highlands results in court, which will now see fresh polls in the January 26 by-election.

Lim today noted that 80 per cent of the Orang Asli voters in Cameron Highlands voted for the MIC candidate during the May 2018 election, saying it is timely to reverse the voting trend to have 80 per cent to vote for Pakatan Harapan in the by-election instead.

“If this historic result could be produced during the Cameron Highlands by-election, it will mean that at last the Orang Asli  in Malaysia have stood up for their rights as full citizens in Malaysia, with all this means in politics, economics, education, health-care, job opportunities, housing and land.

“This is why I have proposed the holding of a National Orang Asli Conference in Cameron Highlands this month to discuss and formulate a blueprint for Orang Asli upliftment in the New Malaysia of Pakatan Harapan.

“If such a National Orang Asli Conference could be held in Cameron Highlands, it would also mean that the Orang Asli in Cameron Highlands who had bravely stood up for the country by being witnesses of truth, justice and democracy against bribery, money-politics and voter-threats in the Cameron Highlands election case, will again create history by spearheading a Reformasi Orang Asli in Malaysia,” he added.