IN the wake of the deaths of 15 Bateq Orang Asli from Kampung Koh, Gua Musang, many have expressed their sadness and sympathy for the loss of so many from a community of so few.
Initially, pneumonia was given as the cause of the deaths and days later, measles was identified as the cause. There is speculation that contaminants from a manganese mine had poisoned the victims.
The question is, how is it the Bateq were not vaccinated against measles? The very low rate of inoculation against measles was attributed to the Bateq “inclination” to live a nomadic existence and their lack of education.
Any scholar of the Orang Asli like myself, who has spent more than four decades researching them, would argue that the underlying source for all the Orang Asli’s health maladies is a more menacing disease.
Often unacknowledged and concealed, this disease is called structural violence, a blanket concept for inequality, poverty, discrimination, racism, oppression and powerlessness.
Its symptoms include the loss of access to traditional lands and forms of livelihood, environmental destabilisation, poor nutrition and diet, the diminution of cultural autonomy, growing discontent, despair, desolation and total dejection, leading, among other things, to youth suicide, substance abuse and other social ills.
As with the Indigenous peoples around the world, the combination of state and majority domination, market-focused development and unregulated capitalism have brought about this malaise.
The cruel irony is that the cure recommended for this disease is often the cause for it. To draw Orang Asli into “the mainstream of society”, they have been resettled to areas with impoverished soils that are unsuitable for productive farming.
Concomitantly, freeing up their traditional lands for the benefit of others who prey on the Orang Asli in their capitalist extractive enterprises such as commercial logging and mining.
The Orang Asli have engaged in ecologically sound economic pursuits for thousands of years but are still deemed “backward” and “primitive” by state development planners. They have been taught to “fish” like us with disastrous consequences as well documented by numerous studies.
Besides, our so-called modern techniques have led to the depletion of 94 per cent of large ocean fish, the destruction of 98 per cent of old-growth forests, and the degradation and pollution of 80 per cent of rivers that they are now unable to support life anymore.
Perhaps, we should learn from them on how to live wisely within nature’s limits and relate non-violently and peacefully with each other. In our effort to foster peace and ecological regeneration in our troubled world, there is much we can learn from the Orang Asli and people like them. It’s time we treat them with respect, equality and dignity.
This entails putting a stop to their land dispossession and displacement and recognising their rights to their traditional lands. We must also halt the imposition of our value systems and religions on them and make efforts to learn about their cultures and traditional religions.
We need more dialogue with the Orang Asli where we must listen actively and deeply to their stories, problems and aspirations. And we should not talk over their voices by telling them what is “good” for them.
Our sympathy (or pity) for the Orang Asli must be transformed into compassion and empathy. This requires a mindset that reflects that Orang Asli lives matter. As the medical anthropologist, Paul Farmer eloquently stated: “The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world.”
Malaysia’s first peoples must be first in the minds of all Malaysians when divvying up the nation’s wealth.
The writer, an anthropologist, has studied the Orang Asli since 1975. He is Emeritus Professor of La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia, and global director of the Dialogue, Empathic Engagement and Peacebuilding (DEEP) Network