Footnote

As the Felda Scheme does not solve the problem of landlessness, the peasants are forced to open up some rural areas by group efforts despite the warnings and barbarous treatment of the government. According to incomplete statistics, 200,000 acres of land in Kelantan, Pahang, Perak, and Kedah were opened up by the landless peasants themselves. In Pahang alone, about 50,000 acres of land were involved. In Temerloh (Pahang), 5,000 peasants were 'illegally' involved in the cultivation of about 30,000 acres of rural sites.

In 1971, the State Governor of Kedah revealed 101 cases of 'illegal seizers' of land and 120 were reported in the following year. Ironically the just struggle of the landless peasants is recklessly suppressed by the authority. These peasants were forced out of their newly cultivated land by armed policemen and put into jail.

On September 3, 1969. Hamid Tuah, the leader of a group of landless peasants in Telok Gong (Selangor) was arrested for 'illegally' opening up 80 acres of virgin jungle and he was put in the Batu Gajah detention Camp.

In January 1973 about 200 acres of padifields in Kampong Java of Penang were destroyed by bulldozers and 100 lorries, under the supervision of the Panghulu (District Officer). News reports revealed that these lands were claimed by the state government to construct foreign enterprisad industrial sites such as electronic and textile factories. Their padi fields were ruthlessly destroyed without prior notice, leaving the peasants in a state of desperate helplessness.

On January 26, 1973. Nanyang Siang Pau (a local Newspaper) reported that a team of armed policemen led by the district officer of Sungai Siput (lpoh) went on a wild search for a group of "illegal" tapioca planters in the "claimed government lands". Fortunately all planters escaped in time even though their crops, tools and belongings were confiscated. These planters had been applying for some land for years but their requests had never been met.

The crucial point of interest is that why do the government authorities deny the landless peasants the right to open up some rural jungle land for cultivation purposes? Firstly, the landless peasants are to be used as cheap labour sources in the Felda Scheme as shown in the above article and secondly, those rural jungle lands (which are claimed to be the properties of the Sultan and the state) are either reserved by the comprador-bureaucrats for foreign capitalists as industrial sites or sold through bribery and corruption with large profits.

—Tongin