Conflicts in the Iskandar development region: The case of Johor Bahru’s Orang Seletar, Malaysia

This paper makes a preliminary assessment of the impact of the development of the Iskandar region on the aboriginal community of Orang Seletar in eight villages located in the district of Johor Bahru. In general, the field findings showed that there were little indications that this community was in on its way to modernisation and advancement. Instead, they were found to be marginalised and even disenfranchised from the development mainstream that was gathering momentum in the Iskandar region. They were still very much eking out a living with their traditional mode of subsistence fishing around the waters of the Teberau Strait. One overriding factor that contributed to the perpetuation of this life of abject poverty was the plain fact that the Iskandar development project was neither geared nor designed to develop community on the margins like the Orang Seletar. Rather, it was meant to serve the interests of the mainstream region and stakeholders under the pretext of making Johor a world class economy. For the Orang Seletar, this not only spelled social marginalisation given their lacking in all respects of the participation requisites but also economic disaster as pollution and new restrictions now threatened their very source of income. The paper concludes that to circumvent disenfranchisement, the Seletar people need to be moved out of traditional fishing altogether and resettled in sedentary agricultural schemes. For as long as they were dependent on traditional fishing activities Iskandar development would only worsen both their physical and economic living conditions.