Asun’s Rebellion: The Political Growing Pains of a Tribal Society in Brooke Sarawak, 1929-1940 by Robert Pringle
Tom’s Note: This article reflects a bias favouring the Brooke government and relegates the Asun Rebellion as a minor irritation. I doubt Ibans who were killed, resettled and had their longhouses torched saw it that way.
Asun was born in a longhouse on the Entabai branch of the Kanowit River in about 1880. Ansus’s immediate forbears were of Skrang origin. His most remote ancestors were some upper Saribas people. For the first part of his life, he was an official representative of the Brooke regime. He was named penghulu, a name invented by the Brooks. Asun was also Tuai Rumah, a customary head of the longhouse who was elected by the residents to settle disputes. Among his other duties was to collect the yearly door tax of one dollar per family. According to the Brookes, there is every reason to believe he did his job well.
The name of Asun did not appear again until 1926, when he became involved in a dispute with the Resident of the Third Division. He was required to pay a fine of two pikuls of brassware. He resigned as penghulu, but the Resident appointed to uptake his position was too scared. The Ibans said his resignation was the change in Brooke policy where they attempted to systemize the tax imposing it on longhouse family rooms (doors)occupied by widows and indigents who before were exempt from the tax.
Soon, there were more Brooke taxes. A new tax on shotguns went into force. Another new tax on the ladders that led up to the longhouse, $5.00 per ladder, was also imposed. Rumours spread among the Iban community that the Brookes wanted to tax every time an Iban had sex with his wife. The money was to be deposited into a box kept on the veranda of the longhouse.
There were other changes during Vyner Brooke’s administration. Upstream limits on which no Iban was allowed to farm were imposed and enforced by the Brookes on the Batang Lupar and the Rejang river systems. A rule was instituted where no longhouse could be constructed with less than ten family doors, a move to control immigration from Indonesia. Passes were required to leave the district, and young men were told: “not to wander so much”. The Brooke government established uniform rates for the various capitation(taxes paid in advance for health care) taxes levied on Ibans and Malays. A newly created Forest Department began to mark off areas where the Ibans were forbidden to hunt wild animals, destroy timber for hill rice farming or gather jungle produce.
Resentment over the new regulation was compounded by two developments: widespread disagreement among the Ibans themselves about their customs and the onset of the world depression.
The disagreement between Ibans about their own customs made it difficult for Brooks agents to determine who was right or wrong. Whenever a verdict was made against an offender, he blamed the government.
The worldwide depression slowed and eventually halted the demand for upriver jungle produce. The jobs that the Ibans counted on as the substitute for headhunting disappeared. The rubber market also collapsed, leaving hundreds of smallholders with nowhere to sell their produce.
An article in the Sarawak Gazette in 1930 stated, “All was quiet among the upriver Dayaks, but the trouble is being caused by the Kanowit ex Penghulu Asoon (sic) who refused to come down to Sibu as ordered and is visiting other longhouses preaching sedition. The majority of Dayaks take no notice of him and consider him mad, but he gets a certain amount of support among the youngsters.”
In the months that followed, C.D. Adams, the Resident of the third division, sent men to talk to Asun and convince him to come to Sibu. None of the men was successful. Asun sent war spears to the Ibans of the second and third divisions, which informed them that fighting was imminent and he needed help.
In June, a group of Kanowit Iban (sic) travelled to Kuching and were assured that most of their demands were met. A the same time, however, Asun was circulating threats against the life of the British officer stationed at Bintang, a town up the Rejang. Rumours of an Iban attack were causing panic at Bintang, Sarikei, and elsewhere. The Resident decided sterner measures were called for.
In July 1931, a force of about a hundred trained Sarawak Rangers accompanied by 400 hundred volunteers proceeded to the mouth of the Julau, below the point where Asun’s Entabi stream enters the Kanowit River.Asun had cleared the trees from the point of land near his longhouse, boasting that this was the place he would fight the Rajah. The report in the Sarawak Gazette said the Ibans were just “letting off gas.”
Yet, the same report tells the British officer in charge of the expedition did not enforce the collection of firearms as required by the emergency declaration, and he did not venture any further into the unfriendly territory. The Brookes returned downriver after this “display” of power.
Towards the end of 1931, Rajah’s younger brother, Bertram, proceeds at first to Sibu. After attending a meeting of the Iban Penghulus to debate the Iban adat, he met Asun at the new Pengulu house, Endu, who the government appointed to replace Asun. After an evening meal, powerful opinions were exchanged
After a further exchange of unpleasantries, the Travelling District Officer, H.E. Cutfield, told Asun that he would receive no more than a light prison sentence since he did not kill anyone. Bertram noted Asun was armed with a pistol and two daggers and would have used them if an arrest was attempted. At dawn the next day Asun departed, still defiant.
A month later, a punitive expedition was also sent up the Entabi and Kanowit rivers to challenge Asun. Another force, led by Bertram, was sent up the Batang Lupar river to prevent the Batang Lupar Ibans from joining the Asun. The reception of the Rajahs force was anything but friendly. Women and children fled into the jungle, and valuables were buried in old Chinese jars.
The punitive expedition was meting out punishment to Asun and his neighbours. Still defiant, Asun, burned his longhouse before the Brooke forces arrived. In a few days of scattered fighting, Asun and his fighters staged two ambushes, wounding five men and killing one. A few months later, another expedition was launched by the Brookes with no more conclusive results.
By the middle of 1932, the pattern of rebellion in the area was further established. The other longhouses generally supported the rebels.
Towards the end of 1932, Asun decided to give himself up. The reasons were varied, but he was probably tired of living a fugitive life. He refused to submit to the Rajah until the Rajah sent a young district officer to remain in his longhouse so he would not be executed in Kuching. He was subsequently detained in Kuching and then sent to Lundu in the extreme eastern corner of Sarawak, where he could not rally the forces.
The troubles did end with Asun’s arrest. Previously the Brooke policy was to send downriver Ibans to attack the upriver Ibans as a punishment. They burned, plundered and engaged in official headhunting warfare.
Now, the Brooke government began a series of relocations. The populations of entire rivers were forced to move downriver partially as punishment and partly so they could not help the rebels. Many were relocated along the Igan River.
The Brooke army enforced the evacuation of several important streams in what is known as the Kanowit district. These included the entire Poi River, the Negemah above Nanga Lakah river, all the upper Kanowit above Nanga Mujok and the entire Entabai tributary, and Asuns home steam. In the Poi river alone, 1,000 Ibans were evacuated, and thirty abandoned longhouses were set ablaze. Resettlement was so common an occurrence that the Iban verb batak became a standard phrase as a person who was relocated had been baked.
Two other rebel leaders arose after Asun was exiled to Lundu. Kendawang, a Kanowit Iban, was in a feud with an official of the third division. He was on close terms with the Europeans and worked for the Forest Department, marking out Forest reserves of the extreme headwaters of the Third division. From his earnings, he purchased a gun. Wandering into Sibu, he was arrested and jailed in violation of the Emergency order to turn in guns. He escaped from jail with the help of Ijaw and murdered a retired Sikh constable at his home not far from Kanowit.
His half brother Banyang and the pair eventually joined Kendawang was hunted and remained at large across a wide area of the second and third districts. In 1940, the Rajah Brooke offered amnesty to the pair, and they surrendered to the Rajah. Kendawang was exiled to Malaya and became a collector of specimens at the Federated Malayan States Museum. He was returned to Sarawak at the outbreak of war and took care of the Rajah’s rubber holding. His half brother became a capable politician.
Fr Robert Pringle Asun’s Rebellion Sarawak Museum Journal December 1968