Category Archives: Food for Thought/Opinions

Cultural heritage management in Sarawak: how we see things and how we can contribute

At our recent meeting with the Sarawak Chief Minister we recalled SHS’s views on Sarawak’s cultural heritage and on the ways we can contribute to enhance its management. Our key suggestions to the Government are summarized in the tables below. We presented specifically two key short term proposals : – A candid assessment of Sarawak’s […]

Santubong village extension and archaeological sites: the need to reconcile development needs and heritage conservation

[updated 14 Aug. 2017 (added photo)] Sarawak Heritage Society Statement download pdf version On 22 March 2017, the immediate past president of the Sarawak Heritage Society draw attention to earthworks on the land immediately facing site of the Bongkissam shrine in Santubong. It was then learnt that these works related to a project to extend […]

More Borneo WW2 shipwrecks plundered, this time in Sabah

In January, three Japanese WW2 shipwrecks lying off Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, were reported to have been extensively stripped for metal salvaging. Coming after similar occurrences on military shipwrecks in the Java and South China Sea, the divers’ community and the fishermen (who benefit from the wrecks, which act as artificial reefs) once again showed outrage. […]

Notice of de-registration of Kuala Lumpur listed heritage creates stir

[updated 07 March 2017] The ‘MaTiC’ complex, on Jalan Ampang, Kuala Lumpur, is centered on a colonial architecture house built in 1935 as the home of a business tycoon, the “Eu Tong Sen house” and the “Dewan Tunku Abdul Rahman”, the hall where Tunku Abdul Rahman was installed as Malaysia’s first Agong in 1957 and […]

“A passion for conserving historical buildings”

“A passion for conserving historical buildings“, Borneo Post online, 11 Dec. 2016 A page-long Borneo Post article on architect Mike Boon (former Sarawak Heritage Society president, who has been instrumental in setting up the SHS and on stimulating awareness and advocacy on the preservation of Sarawak’s built heritage) and Dr John Ting (architectural historian, Assistant […]

Heritage conservation is not intellectual gimmick, nor rich world luxury

Let us face it:  some still see conservation and management of cultural heritage as rich countries’ luxuries, beyond bread-and-butter development needs; or as vehicles to promote western concepts of what should be regarded as beautiful and precious and, therefore, worth preserving. Are the proponents of that understanding on the right track? Not so. Let us […]