Only Oriental Daily mentioned it 東方日報才有提到

I came across a column in Oriental Daily(東方日報) by Young Ai Ling(楊艾琳 I use onamotopeia here, as I had no idea who she is, and her picture on her column shows the writer is a woman), in Oriental Daily. She wrote about one evening, sitting in the balcony of a long-house in Sarawak, and someone in the long house turned on a radio, the sound of sape came out, like a hornbill flying pass.

The radio is a you-do-not-see-them-in-electrical-appliance-anymore kind of shortwave radio, and a small one, but it is the hope of the natives: the hope of getting out of poverty, the hope of getting education, the hope of not being evicted from their land. Each evening from 6pm to 8pm, the natives received the news from outside through shortwave radio. In the neglected region of Malaysia where there is no electricity supply, telecommunication, and internet, all long-houses turn on their shortwave radio, tune in to the same shortwave frequency during this 2 hours.

She is referring to Radio Free Sarawak station. I do not know for sure if the station actually got a license to broadcast, or otherwise. But I am pretty sure Malaysian government does not like this station.

This station is in Bahasa Malaysia(Malaysian standardized version of Malay) and dialects of Sarawakian natives, broadcast only news, and talk-show, call-ins. And all of them mostly centred around the Murum dams, how the natives are dislocated from the very land they rely on for their livelihood, and the court-cases about the native land, all the kind of issues we do not see and hear on the news aired by Astro, RTM, TV3, NTV7, 8TV, TV9. Google "Radio Free Sarawak" and you will get the website for the online edition, podcasts available for download.

It is sad that theSarawakian natives have to fight so hard for their plights to be heard, even in the age of information super-highway. Only in Malaysia. Please show your support for them, anyway you can.

A hind-sight: It is while writing this post, that I realised that the columnist did not specifily mention she was in Sarawak, but only mentioned hornbill, sape, East Malaysia, Murum. So only Sarawakians can recognise what she was writing. From my experience of living in Malay Peninsula, I am certain almost all the Peninsular Malaysians do not get her points, as they actually have a hard time understanding which part of Malaysia she was referring to. Why did she write in such an obscure manner?

A side note:
Among all the Chinese dailies I can find in Klang Valley, only Oriental Daily has a column concerning natives of Sarawak. I suspect this is due to the following 3 reasons:
1. The daily is backed by a conglomorate from Sarawak, so somehow the daily gives Sarawak just that little bit more attention.

2. The backer of daily is at odds with the man controlling Sin Chew daily and her sister dailies.
(Don't just take my word for it, just dig a little into the past: back in 2003A.D., when Oriental Daily first launched in Klang Valley, Sin Chew daily and her sister dailies fought a dirty war with Oriental Daily. Read carefully here, not dirty campaign, but dirty war, as both camps used really low and dirty tactics in the war. The camp of Sin Chew actually banned newspaper-stand and newspaper peddlars from selling Oriental Daily, among other things, the most hilarious part was both camps accused each other of burning the opponent's newspaper. Yes, Sin Chew camp won, but not without injuring herself. I could never look at those editors the same way again.)

3. The daily has a very low market penetrate rate, it is free to pick up in Jaya Jusco(Oo, sorry, now the offical name is Aeon), and other places from Monday to Friday, though some newspaper-stands and 7-11 do carry this daily, 365 days a years, available for RM1.00 per copy; so it had to be different from Sin Chew and her sister dailies.

我在東方日報看到楊艾琳的專欄:<<楊城藍井>>。（谷歌一下就看到了）
楊小姐在專欄中說到，在長屋中聴到原住民收聴電台。這電台指的是 Radio Free Sarawak（谷歌一下就看到了，可以下載），這是原住民自己辦的，有沒牌照我可不知道，原天傍晚6pm到8pm播出兩小時，內容是新聞，清談和叩應，語言用馬來西亞國語和砂朥越原住民的語言。

長屋中收聴電台用的是現今在電器店已經找不到的短波收音機。在砂朥越的內陸，還是有許多地方沒有電力廠的供電，沒電訊網絡，小小的一台短波收音機，帶給原住民的是希望：保障他們本身權益的希望。Free Sarawak的內容都是原住民設路障阻止興建沐若水壩，原住民習俗地的訴訟這些事件的最新消息，尤其是受到影響的原住民的悲情心聲，這些我們在Astro, RTM, TV3, NTV7, 8TV, TV9 的新聞中是看聴不到的。悲哀的是在網絡時代，砂朥越的原住民要這麽辛苦才能把本身的辛酸傳出去。

只在馬來西亞。