Re. Alleged Rape Of Native Girls By Loggers, Malaysian Minister: "They're Very Good Storytellers"

[hatrack]

Speaking to the BBC, James Masing, Sarawak Minister for Land Development, dismissed claims by Penan girls and women who said they had been sexually abused and raped by logging workers in a remote jungle area. BBC reporter Angus Stickler was investigating well-documented allegations of rape and abuse by logging-company employees in Sarawak's Middle Baram region when he met one of the apparent victims.

"I spoke to Mary, a teenage girl who was tending to her baby daughter amid swarms of flies. The child's legs were covered with running sores. It's a desperate scene. Mary fell pregnant after she was raped. With the help of a translator she tells her story. How she was hitching a ride to school and was picked up by a logging company driver and two other men. They stopped off overnight. She was dragged from her room, beaten unconscious. She awoke naked - left in the dirt."

Her story was one of several documented in a 110-page report published in September 2009 by the Malaysian Ministry for Women, Family and Community Development.

When Stickler confronted Masing, who heads the agency that grants logging licenses in the area, the minister said "Penan are very good story tellers. "They change their stories, and when they feel like it."

EDIT

http://news.mongabay.com/2009/1207-sarawak.html

[joeybee12]

1. What a piece of filth Masing is...

...sickening.

[shireen]

2. he should be fired

what an asshole!