Not a day goes by in Sarawak without an announcement about huge plans for expenditure on “cutting edge” enterprises.

Space and satellite projects; underwater cables and carbon capture schemes; international airports and deep sea ports; mega-dams for green hydrogen – the state government bigwigs have spent millions flying round the globe with bloated entourages promoting it all.

And they have the money, thanks to a beautiful country busting with natural resources which have been ruthlessly exploited for decades with little care given for the destructive consequences or impact on communities.

Yet, it seems, when it comes to adequate basic health care for ordinary people, as with housing and social security, Sarawak’s budget is simply failing to provide.

With all its first world wealth (Sarawak has been accorded wealthy country status by the world bank based on GDP per capita) the shocking reality is that medical provision remains backward, shoddy and expensive for the poorest folk.

So it is that, despite the efforts and kind concern of medical staff in the Miri public hospital, one of the state’s most lauded and recognised fighters for social justice has been forced to take on yet another battle from his hospital bed, which is to get the care he needs to keep on fighting for his people.

As one of the abnormally high number of people in Sarawak who suffers from chronic kidney disease (a serious health concern that the state government seems for decades to have found it convenient to largely ignore rather than invest in research and adequate support for the large number of patients) Dennis Along has nonetheless managed to fight through his disease and frequent gruelling treatments for dialysis for decades.

Despite his developing illness Dennis Along has remained a crucial leading voice in holding the state government and timber companies to account over the alienation of lands and issuing of timber and plantation licences.

At Long Terawan, as Sarawak Report detailed nearly two decades back, corrupt practices resulted in the theft of his community’s rights and the issuing of logging licenses on their lands in return for derisory compensation.

Dennis Along stood up for his community and he has been fighting ever since, taking this case and then so many others into the courts and battling on, despite the overwhelming costs, inevitable delays and all the advantages held by the government backed perpetrators of such injustice.

If those who threw money and influence against Dennis and his poor community thought that they would give up and submit to the cruel treatment they have received, then they reckoned without Dennis and his fortitude.

“His spirit is what has kept us going and his example will keep us going”

one fellow community activist told Sarawak Report. “He knows he has right on his side, the Lord on his side and that justice for his community is at stake. So the courts and political leaders must eventually come round!”

There have been important victories.  Dennis Along was also a key activist in the Baram Dam protests, which prevented that destructive plan in 2016.  He likewise campaigned against the logging by the Taib family owned company Radiant Lagoon, which had pursued illegal logging activity around his native community area in Borsamulu, alongside the world heritage Mulu national park.

Indeed, his campaign against the logging company Pusaka KTS Sdn Bhd and the forestry chief cum politician Len Talif Saleh, who had promoted the license, ground on until the company eventually gave up.

There have been endless setbacks.  Just a few weeks ago he lost a latest case in the Miri court. However, his relentless (and predictable) response was to set about yet another appeal, raising funds and cajoling lawyers and his community not to give up.

Not a march or protest in his area takes place without his galvanising presence and energy – rounding up folk, preparing banners and statements and making sure the media are informed to cover the issues.

Above all Dennis has campaigned to force the state government to return the millions of hectares of native land right areas that were purloined under the so-called state land codes of the hated former chief minister Abdul Taib Mahmud.

One day (and likely sooner rather than later) his campaign will succeed. The shamefulness of what has been done to the indigenous people and their rights has been exposed and is fully known about, thanks to his publicising of the plight of his people.

He has shone the spotlight, and those responsible cannot escape what they have done and the disapproval that lawless greed and injustice will bring upon their heads.  It is simply a matter of time.

Yet, for now, he is struck down at last by illness that thanks to the warped priorities of the same powers that be, has not been sufficiently treated.  This resilient campaigner has waited for months in deep discomfort simply to receive tests and scans that ought to be immediately available and free.

Instead, his friends and supporters have had to raise funds to fly him to Kuching after long weeks of waiting.  Basic medicines have been hard to obtain and once more care that ought to come free in a wealthy country has needed to be paid for.

Again, in this situation this brave campaigner is facing the same pain and injustice that is experienced by all his people, thanks to the policies of a government that seems not to care about the fate of Sarawak’s indigenous communities – the same communities whose lands have made those politicians and their crony class of businessmen so fabulously rich.

In the process he is simply kept doing what he always does in unleashing another campaign.  Through his suffering Dennis is now highlighting how the land grabbers of Sarawak have also spent all the money of the state on futile vanity projects rather than basic provision for the people.

He has continued to release his statements and issue campaigning photos, bravely even from his hospital bed and the message has been received and is circulating across Sarawak.

Well done to Dennis Along (again). Please rally to make him better soon as Sarawak wants him back on his feet!