For too long the tyrants of North Borneo have counted on remoteness to conceal greed, corruption and the grotesque ill treatment by those in control of these resource rich states of their still desperately poor inhabitants.

Now, while touched up tourism brochures may seek to entice honeymoon couples from across the globe to  the once picturesque island paradises controlled by those bullies, these stark images will show the ugly truth.

Self-interest if not basic human compassion (which the Sabah authorities plainly lack) should have taught these bully boy thugs better than to commit such acts in the age of the internet and mobile phone!

Self-interest should also have informed these outdated blockheads (who surely travel the globe relentlessly on all the money and ‘expenses’ they have looted from their public office) that it is sights such as these delightful, traditional homes and the fascinating story of Sabah’s historic communities that would have above all have attracted those same tourists?

No one with sophistication or taste would travel to Sabah to sit in a concrete block hotel next to  beaches dredged of sand by the foreign businessmen who are behind this drive to force away the local people so that they can steal the very life and land from under the feet of Sabah’s native people’s, thanks to dirty collusion by those in authority.

Laughably, those who have sanctioned the tearing down of homes built through the self-reliant sweat and graft of people who have done no harm to others, have made statements that these folk are due to be re-housed…. eventually!

Apparently, the Sabah authorities need to get around to counting these men, women and children first (they calculate it is “about 7,000“) and then they will decide who they legally think they owe compensation towards and one day build some houses….. somewhere.

Meanwhile, they choose to describe these indigenous nomads whose presence has been noted for centuries by visiting foreign scholars and writers, as “squatters”.

This is a crime against a people who through years of government neglect have been forced into statelessness and left without proper education or health provision, despite all the wealth of the state of Sabah and the global technical progress of the half century since independence – like so many of the poor indigenous folk throughout the state who are the most deprived of all Malaysia.

It is what the UN describes as a crime against humanity.

Malaysia has rightly railed against the appalling situation facing those in Gaza. However, those who live in glass houses should not throw stones and this action on these island beaches deserve international condemnation for what it is – a crime against humanity, plain and simple (and stupid).