Category: Activism

Categories
Activism Environment

[720] Of save Gunung Jerai

Gunung Jerai is one of the more famous mountains in Malaysia. Yet, I’ve never been to Gunung Jerai which is located in Kedah, northern Malaysia. What brings the mountain to my attention is the “Save Gunung Jerai Campaign” . Given that Gunung Jerai is as popular as Gunung Ledang, I was quite surprised to find out that former needs any saving at all.

Interested, I scoured the internet from more information and I was not disappointed. It was in the mainstream media a couple of days ago and I must’ve missed it entirely. And it turned out, this thing started a couple of years back, way back to 2001.

The problem at hand is a quarry. There is a quarry operating within the boundary of a forest reserve located nearby the mountain. Just like what happened in Selangor eh? According to the Star:

The state executive council made a decision on Sept 12, 2001, to surrender Compartment 16 of the forest reserve to quarry operator Syarikat Kemelong & Sankojaya Construction as “private property”.

I’m not familiar with any related related regulation related to relabelling a section of a forest reserve as private property but it does sound fishy.

Apart from that, an activist even received a death threat from an unknown person. It won’t take a rocket scientist to suspect that the person that made the threat might be related to beneficiaries of the quarry. More at Utusan; Sorry, it’s in Malay:

Pegawai SAM terima ugutan bunuh

ALOR STAR 28 Jan. – Timbalan Setiausaha Kehormat Sahabat Alam Malaysia (SAM), Mohd. Azmi Abdul Hamid mendakwa menerima ugutan bunuh daripada seseorang yang tidak dikenali yang dipercayai mempunyai kaitan dengan projek kuari batu di Gunung Jerai, Yan.

Menurut beliau, ugutan itu diterima melalui telefon oleh isterinya di rumah, Rabu lalu yang turut mengancam untuk menculik anak-anaknya.

According to the Star in the same report, the operator of the quarry is Syarikat Kemelong & Sankojaya Construction. There isn’t too much information about the company online. The only related stuff comes from the Malaysian Department of Environment’s website. According to the DOE’s site, Glisten Environmental Consultants is the quarry operator’s consultant. A search on “Glisten Environmental Consultants” on Google doesn’t give anything interesting either. Or maybe, I’m just too lazy to find out more.

Malaysia Today reports that 12 non-governmental organizations are appealing to the sultan of Kedah to intervene and stop the operation of the quarry. Sorry, this too is in Malay.

Sultan Kedah dirayu selamatkan Gunung Jerai

Oleh Zulkilfi Mohamed

KEDAH: 12 Badan Bukan Kerajaan (NGO) merayu Sultan Kedah DYMM Sultan Abdul Halim Mu’adzam Shah, supaya campurtangan berhubung cadangan projek kuari di Kompartmen 16 Hutan Simpan Gunung Jerai yang menyebabkan kemusnahan kawasan serta bencana yang dialami penduduk setempat, akibat aktiviti pembalakan dan kerja-kerja tanah di kawasan terbabit.

Frankly, I doubt the sultan will do anything.

Lastly, a site offers a short introduction on the Save Gunung Jerai Campaign. They call it a press release but, whatever. And yeah, still in Malay.

Categories
Activism Environment Poetry

[717] Of haikus for whales!

Remember the Greenpeace’s ship that collided with Japanese whalers in the southern seas?

Well, they’re holding a haiku contest and the winner will win USD 20 worth of prizes of Greenpeace’s merchandises. Heh, and I say, why not?

Blue are the skies, seas,
Birds flying, whales swimming, safe,
Spring’s coming, rejoiced!

Haha. Lame.

p/s – a gem! Q & A: Our Omnipotent President by Fafblog. (via)

Categories
Activism

[705] Of reviving ReMag

At ReCom.org, it’s usually a style to add Re- in front of everything. It’s all about ReCom, ReCommend, ReMag. And now, it’s about reviving ReMag. If I may be lame, which I am most of the time, it’s ReMag: ReVival.

ReMag was a little project by ReCom.org. An online magazine with articles written by Malaysians. It started two years ago but five editions later, it suffered a slow death. ReMag 6 was supposed to go out on December 2005 but it didn’t. It was because for ReMag 6, we tried to run the project on a new model but the model collapsed under its own weight – contributions started to dry up as prospective authors accused ReMag editors as a bunch of elitists. The project’s theme itself was considered of being too serious by many outside of ReMag editorial board. Hackers’ attack on ReCom.org killed off everything that was left, including the archives. For more than six months now, ReMag has been a mere blank page.

A few days ago, effort to revive the project started to pick up. For some reasons, people became excited about it all over again. One of the people is me – I found myself in the project once again. The aim right now is to gather old editors that worked for us and find new ones. More importantly, it’s time to solicit Malaysians to write for ReMag yet again.

When ReMag was up and running, it was healthy. Surpisingly too, it was popular. I didn’t know that until the project died out. At the same time, there was no competitor. Currently however, I could think of two competitors out there – one is theCicak and the other is inkyhands. The best thing is, some people at ReCom recognize most people at theCicak and inkyhands due to previous networking. So, fun.

Now. If you are interested in contributing to ReMag, please mail me at mnoorsha [at] umich [dot] edu. There’s no preset topic and you are free to send anything worthy of read. If you are interested in being an editor or are able to findle with technical details and able to write in HTML, PHP or mess around with CMS, mail me too. For more information, visit ReCom.org.

So, ReMag. Coming soon at www.ReMag.org.

Categories
Activism Liberty

[654] Of Anwar Ibrahim at Michigan III

After corresponding with a person inside Malaysian students’ association at Michigan, apparently, the issue had arisen due to unfortunate misunderstanding.

The warning from Malaysian Student Department (MSD) was issued way back in January 2005. Somebody re-forwarded it later – what seems to be in conjunction of Anwar Ibrahim’s lecture – to the Malaysian students’ association at Michigan. Hence, neither MSD nor the Malaysian government had issued a warning directly related to the lecture.

Earlier, I had planned to write several letters of protest to some quarters. With the new development however, the need to write them has evaporated.

Still, the letter that was issued by MSD is an act of hypocrisy and it’s good to know that the person that I corresponded with feels that the letter is unjustified in any way. Moreover, the person assures me that the association hadn’t barred nor spied on any Malaysian at Michigan that attended the lecture.

Categories
Activism Liberty

[653] Of Anwar Ibrahim at Michigan II

I sent an email to Jeff Ooi about Anwar Ibrahim’s lecture . Mr. Ooi has kindly and willingly highlighted the issue.

With that, at least two more mails need to fly. In my list are Michigan Student Assembly and the Office of the President. Maybe, a CC to the Michigan Daily and Michigan Independent will do the trick too.

If you disagree at how Malaysian Student Department (MSD) at Chicago is handling the matter, please send a short letter of protest to the Student Assembly and the University President.

For representatives in the Assembly, their emails can be found at this page. Alternatively, send your protest to msa[dot]reps[at]umich[dot]edu. For the President, her office email is presoff[at]umich[dot]edu. Replace [at] with “@” and [dot] with “.”.

Don’t forget to give MSD Chicago a visit and give them a piece of your mind.

Be a good citizen. Email these people and assert pressure against MSD Chicago. The time for indifference has come and gone.

For more information, read [672] Of Anwar Ibrahim at Michigan and [670] Of hypocrisy in Malaysian policy.