INDIGENOUS Penan communities deep in the interior of northern Sarawak have intensified their resistance against logging operations, with women and elderly villagers now joining human blockades in several forest areas near Long Tepen in the middle Baram district.
Native rights advocate and Sarawak Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) chairman Roland Engan, who recently visited the protest site near the Long Tepen settlement, confirmed that frustration and desperation are growing among the Penan people.
“I went to check on the conditions of the natives who have set up the blockades,” said Engan. “The Penan protestors have not only set up physical blockades against the loggers – they have even erected temporary shelters to sleep along these logging roads, keeping watch day and night.
“There are also Penan women and elderly folks joining the blockades out of desperation.”
Engan urged the Sarawak state government to urgently intervene and resolve the long-standing land dispute, warning that continued inaction was compounding the suffering of the indigenous communities who depend on the forests for their survival.
The ground protests have now spread to at least three other logging zones across Baram, where local Penan groups are blocking access roads to prevent heavy machinery and timber trucks from entering. These blockade sites include areas near Ba’Data Bila, Long Benali, and Ba’Pengiran Kelian, located deep in the forest about 200 kilometres inland from Miri.
On 5 June, four civil society organisations – The Borneo Project, KERUAN, Save Sarawak Rivers and the Bruno Manser Fund – jointly issued a statement highlighting the escalating situation. The groups, represented locally by Engan, alleged that logging companies have continued to harvest timber from forests over which the Penans claim ancestral rights.
“These Penans have set up human blockades in the different locations as a desperate move to stop the logging operators from continuously chopping down their forests,” read the statement.
“Every day, dozens of timber trucks loaded with big logs can be seen leaving the forests belonging to the Penans. These logging operators have never received permission from the Penans to cut down the forests. The Penans were never consulted and their complaints against the loggings were blatantly ignored by the loggers and those in authority.”
According to their estimates, some 162 logging trucks were spotted operating in Penan forest territories in April alone, with timber valued at around RM9 million being extracted monthly.
Despite the growing scale of the protest, no physical confrontations have been reported thus far. Protestors have been seen peacefully blocking access roads used by logging companies in an attempt to halt further forest clearance.
The coalition of NGOs called on the Sarawak state government to intervene immediately, saying the Penans remain defenceless in the face of industrial-scale deforestation. - June 10, 2025
