Malaysian tribe ends protest as mega-dam floods their homes
Last year the Penan protested at the dam site for 36 days (Photo: FOEI)
About 100 Malaysian tribespeople were forced to end a three-month blockade of a dam after rising waters threatened to flood their homes in Borneo, activists said Tuesday.
The state-linked Sarawak Energy company began filling the reservoir in late September, a week after some 100 Penan natives from seven villages began a protest on the only road to the remote, $1.3 billion Murum dam in Sarawak state, located in the northwest of Borneo.
“They have no choice, the water is rising fast so they have to get their belongings,” Peter Kallang, chairman of the NGO Save Sarawak’s Rivers Network, told AFP.
He said their homes were already being flooded before promised resettlement houses had even been completed.
