Sarawak

Sarawak ( Jawi: سراوق ) is a state of Malaysia. It is in the northwest of the island of Borneo, bordering the Sultanate of Brunei, Indonesia and to the neighboring state of Sabah, it forms together with the eastern part of Malaysia. Sarawak is the geographically largest state in Malaysia. It is home to many different ethnic groups, unlike the Malays, the politically and culturally dominant in the rest of the country, neither belong to Islam speak the Malaysian Language as their first language. Sarawak is known as Bumi Kenya Lang ( "Land of the Hornbills " ), the rhinoceros bird is also the emblem of the state. It plays a large role in the animistic religion of some ethnic groups in Sarawak.

Sarawak is named after the current flowing through the capital Kuching Sarawak River.

Geography

Sarawak is located on the South China Sea on the island of Borneo, and together with Sabah, to which it is bounded on the northeast, east of Malaysia. The capital is Kuching. In the North Sarawak surrounds the tiny Sultanate of Brunei completely, while the south and west has a long border with Indonesia.

Topographically Sarawak can be divided into three regions: the coastal region, the mountainous interior and a hilly area between the coast and mountains. Sarawak consists largely of up to almost 2500 m ascending rainforest mountains that merge on the coast in the Wetlands. To the second highest mountain in Sarawak, the lying to the north of Gunung Mulu with his significant cave system, a national park has been established.

The tropical hot and humid climate in the mean annual temperatures of 27 ° C.

Population

Sarawak has about 2.357 million inhabitants ( 2006). It is characterized by a very strong ethnic heterogeneity. The numerically largest ethnic group is the indigenous ethnic group of the Iban, which account for almost 680,000 members about 29 % of the population of Sarawak. Other major groups are Chinese ( 23%), Malays (23%) and two other indigenous peoples, the Bidayuh ( 8%) and the Melanau ( 5%). Unlike in West Malaysia Indians make up only a very small part of the population. The rest of the population in Sarawak is formed apart from foreign immigrants from smaller indigenous people ( 6%). Overall, for the Article 161A 3 ( 7) of the Malaysian Constitution called 21 ethnic groups, sometimes even with multiple sub-groups, as locals Sarawak ( malay.: anak Negeri, literally " children of the land ") apply. Many of these groups have only a few thousand or even a few hundred members. Overall mentioned:

Bukitan Bisayah · · · Dusun Dayak Iban · · · Bidayuh Kedayan Kelabit · · · Kayan Kenyah (including Sabup & Sipeng ) · Kajang (incl. Sekapan, Kejaman, Lahanan, Punan, Tanjong & Kanowit ) · · Lugat LISUM · Malay · Melanau Lun Bawang · · · Penan Sihan · Tagalog · · Tabun Ukit

The most practiced religion is Christianity, with a share of 42.6 % of the total population. However, by conversions, immigration and the Bumiputra policy now 32.2 % of the population Muslim. Furthermore, 13.5 % of the population and Buddhists together 6.0% are followers of Taoism, Confucianism and Chinese folk religions. Only 1.0% are official supporters of indigenous tribal religion. 0.2 % are Hindu and 2.6% have no religious affiliation.

History

In the 15th century, Islam reached through Sumatra, Java and the Malay Peninsula and the coast of Borneo. The Sultanate of Brunei was established, which claimed the area of ​​today's Sarawak used to be.

1838 toured the English adventurer James Brooke, the north coast of Borneo, in a time in which the Sultan of Brunei had significant problems with the Dayakvolk the Bidayuh. Brooke helped the Sultan to pacify the disputes. The Sultan made ​​him a vassal in 1841, and three generations of Brookes managed a century independently the vast territory of present-day Sarawak as a personal fiefdom, even after it formally was a British protectorate since 1888. The Brookes were called the White Rajas of Borneo. Charles Vyner Brooke, the third white Raja, was displaced by the Japanese invasion of Borneo in World War II in 1942. He returned back to Sarawak in 1945, but in 1946 the government officially handed over to the British, thus Sarawak became a crown colony of the United Kingdom.

In 1963, Sarawak became the state of the newly formed Malaysia. The geographically small Sultanate of Brunei remained independent. Today Sarawak surrounds the two small, separated by a valley areas of the Sultanate of Brunei completely.

Economic and environmental destruction

Sarawak has deposits of oil and natural gas that are promoted mainly in the environment of the town Miri in the north of the country. In addition, pepper and rubber are grown and exported tropical wood. In addition, play in the economy of fishing as well as bauxite a role.

The State of Malaysia plans to build a giant hydroelectric power plant ( Bakun project) in Sarawak. Because of the power on the entire island of Borneo is not enough would find acceptance, it is planned to spend the electricity on approximately 600 km of submarine cables with cryogenics on the Malay Peninsula. Due to various financial problems of private general contractor the two previously made ​​for this purpose attempts have been placed each on ice. The first project was to start in 1995 a volume of ten billion Malaysian ringgit, according to damaligem value approximately four billion U.S. dollars. One third of this sum would have to be financed pursuant to the plans from the felling of the valley to be flooded. This plan has never been dropped entirely: the valley is, according to the Chinese Three Gorges Dam, which offer zweitergiebigste electricity chance of the earth. However, resist the indigenous population resettlement; the discussions about the pros and cons of this dam are phased violently in the Malaysian public (keyword technology ethics). Internationally, this project was criticized.

As part of the industrial development program SCORE ( Sarawak Corridor of Renewable Energy ) since 2008 are re- planning construction of several hydroelectric dams that will produce a total of 28,000 megawatts of energy. Various civil society groups warn of the consequences for the environment and population such as the flooding of forest and arable land or forced relocation.

The logging of the equatorial rainforests in Sarawak will remain the focus of the public: While the Malaysian legislation today provides a coordinated approach to wood development, yet it is evident that the (of ethnic Chinese firms cartridges dominated ) timber companies a significant ecological damage cause, because often the government monitoring is specifically influenced and outmaneuvered, and the methods of companies are generally described as " gruff " inadequate. Abdul Taib Mahmud, from 1981 to February 2014 Prime Minister of Sarawak and since then its governor, and his family accumulated by the hammering of precious woods to a billion-dollar fortune. As the Basel environmental activist Bruno Manser made ​​public the deforestation and the destruction of the habitat of the Penan, the Government of Sarawak Abdul Taib Mahmud sat under a bounty on him. In 2000 Bruno Manser disappeared without a trace in the forests of Sarawak.

Tourism is an important economic factor in Sarawak dar. The largest airport is the Kuching International Airport, which is located in Kuching. Worth seeing are the caves of Niah, in which the nests of the swiftlet be harvested from the high ceilings in dangerous acrobatics on ladders and ropes, the famous swallows for the same soup.