By CHEN MAY YEE Staff Reporter

BUKIT PELANDUK, Malaysia - In March, Lim Tong Moi watched helplessly as her
husband and grown son succumbed to high fever, convulsions and vomiting
before slipping into coma and finally dying within days of each other.

They had fallen prey to a mysterious virus caught from pigs reared behind
their wood-plank house in this cluster of villages that was once the center
of Southeast Asia's pig-farming industry. Some 80 farmers in the area died
the same way.

That month, soldiers moved in to evacuate and seal off the farms: 900,000
pigs were shot, bludgeoned or simply buried alive as authorities scrambled
to stop the virus from spreading. A total of 1.1 million animals, or just
under half of Malaysia's pig population, were destroyed.

Now, with her farm demolished, Ms. Lim runs a food stall at the ramshackle
Happy Garden coffee shop to support the remaining members of her family:
one son, 20 years old, who is weak after waking from a coma; two other
sons, ages 25 and 17, who have tested positive for the virus's antibodies
but have yet to show symptoms, and a 15-year-old daughter, who so far is
virus-free.

A Forgotten Land

No new cases have occurred since May, and some of the 18,000 people who
used to live in these five villages are coming home. But it is not the
place they remember. Houses remain empty, furniture and television sets
locked inside. Pig pens and feed warehouses were ripped apart during the
culling, leaving fields of rubble and twisted metal. Worse, the government
that bore down on them seven months ago now appears indifferent, and the
public seems to have forgotten their plight. Many farmers say they still
haven't received adequate compensation for their property - either from the
government or from a fund set up through public donations.

"The issue is not over, but it is forgotten," says Lai Poh Chon, a
35-year-old pig farmer who is a member of an ad hoc village committee
created to highlight the farmers' troubles. "Nobody knows we are suffering
down here," says Mr. Lai, whose brother died of the virus.

Last September, pig farmers began dying in Perak state, and by February the
virus had swept south to this rural corner of Negeri Sembilan state. Around
the country, 105 pig farmers and abattoir workers died. The government
initially diagnosed the disease as Japanese encephalitis, a mosquito-borne
virus that strikes periodically in Malaysia. The authorities began
vaccinating pigs and farmers and fogging farms, but the farmers continued
to die. On March 17, Malaysian scientists working with the Centers for
Disease Control in the U.S. confirmed the discovery of a new virus and
christened it Nipah, after the village where it first struck. International
viral experts are still trying to figure out how the virus originated and
how it moved from pigs to humans.

Malaysia's Health Ministry defends its initial mistaken diagnosis, saying
it was dealing with an unknown virus. The ministry was not informed of any
sick pigs by farmers or the veterinary services department, and the
symptoms shown by the victims led it to conclude that it was dealing with
JE, the ministry said in reply to faxed questions.

"Medical history has shown elsewhere in the world that even the most
reputable of laboratories take a long time, some in terms of several years,
to identify and isolate new pathogens," the ministry said.

Whole Body Hurts

In a small, two-story house near the main street in Bukit Pelanduk, the
biggest of the pig-farming villages, two children sit watching the Spice
Girls on television next to their uncle, a thin man in an open-necked
shirt, a sarong - and diapers.

Teong Mee Fong, 37, was discharged from the hospital three months ago after
being in a coma for two months. He now weighs 55 kilograms, 10 kilos less
than before his illness, and can no longer walk without assistance. He is
slowly getting his memory back. In a halting whisper, he says his "whole
body hurts." He lives with his brother, who gave up running a makeshift
coffee shop in front of the house to look after him.

Five minutes down the road, Shanmuagan Kulandai sits in a world of his own.
The 41-year-old farmer's spacious brick house, with its flowering pots of
bougainvillea, is a testament to the fat profits his pigs used to bring in.
Now family members watch over him anxiously. Mr. Kulandai was in a coma for
a month and has only recently been able to talk and walk slowly. His
"memory is not very good," says his wife, Meen atchy.

She tells him repeatedly what has happened to their farm next door, but he
keeps forgetting. "I will go back to my farm after I recover," he tells a
visitor. "I have more than 5,000 pigs."

Not anymore. There are no more pigs to sell to pay off hefty debts to banks
and feed suppliers. At the deserted Huang Fa Agriculture farm, which once
crammed 20,000 pigs into its pens, the only animal in sight is a small idol
of a gold-robed pig behind a bowl of joss sticks.

Race and Religion

The pig saga is complicated, like many things in Malaysia, by race and
religion. The country's politically dominant Malays, who make up more than
half of the 22.2 million population, are Muslims who abhor pork, while the
pig farmers are mostly ethnic Chinese, with a sprinkling of Indians. Amid
the publicity surrounding the farmers' deaths, many Malaysians were shocked
to discover the sheer size of the industry, which generated three billion
ringgit ($789.5 million) in annual sales in 1998, according to the
Malaysian Swine Exporters' Association. Of that amount, 400 million ringgit
of exports went to Singapore, Hong Kong and Brunei.

Within this ethnic landscape, farmers - some of whom worked on farms their
grandfathers started - are suspicious that the Malay-led government is
using the viral outbreak to rid Malaysia of pigs. They also complain that
the government hasn't delivered on promises of financial aid, and accuse
ethnic-Chinese and Indian politicians of failing to champion their cause.
Indeed, the government's handling of the fallout from the pig virus could
unfold as an emotional issue in coming elections, which must be called
before mid-2000. It is a headache Mahathir Mohamad doesn't need. Now that
the veteran premier's Malay voter base is divided over the sacking and
jailing of former deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim, Dr. Mahathir is banking
heavily on the support of ethnic Chinese, who make up 25% of the population.

"Nobody wants to talk about this," says a government official who declined
to be identified. "Elections are coming."

Since the virus emerged, hundreds of farmers have turned up at
demonstrations to demand financial help, says Lay Yong Tee, the treasurer
of the Swine Exporters' Association. One protest was held at the Kuala
Lumpur headquarters of the Malaysian Chinese Association, which is part of
Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's ruling coalition. The MCA has raised 15.5
million ringgit in public donations, of which about half has been disbursed.

Although some farmers complain that they haven't got their share even
though they applied and qualify for assistance, "they can still appeal,"
says Yeow Chai Thiam, state executive counselor for the district and an MCA
official. "My door is always open."

But that doesn't convince Mr. Lay. "I am waiting for bankruptcy," says the
38-year-old pig farmer. Pay Per Pig The government is paying farmers for
each pig culled, but farmers say the amount is way below the cost of
raising the pigs. The government promised 50 ringgit ($13) per animal, plus
an extra three ringgit if the farmers killed the pig them selves. But it
costs 350 ringgit to rear a pig, which can then be sold for up to 450
ringgit, farmers say.

The government handed over a total of six million ringgit to 145 farmers -
at 53 ringgit a pig - three weeks ago, says Datuk Yeow. He says more than
400 others will receive similar compensation in a week or so. However, more
than 100 others are still arguing with authorities over the number of pigs
they had on their farms, he adds.

Datuk Yeow concedes that the Malay soldiers destroyed property during the
culling. "In order to kill the pigs, some of the buildings have to be
destroyed for the tractor to move in," he says. Prejudice also played a
part, he says. "We do not deny that some of the task-force members
deliberately damaged (property). None of the pig farmers were there. Malays
don't like pigs. The fastest way is the most untidy way."

Government officials, in turn, charge that the farmers had for years
neglected hygiene standards in overcrowded farms that became reservoirs for
diseases. They want the farmers to move to another site right next to the
current farms, where they can buy lots in an integrated farming system with
oxidation ponds to process waste. In Malaysia, only certain areas are
legally designated for pig farming, and the area around Bukit Pelanduk will
no longer be one of them, Datuk Yeow says. Those who want to continue
rearing pigs will have to move to the new site and their current farms must
be converted to other uses. The government also has offered to teach the
pig farmers new skills such as oil-palm and marine farming, but "not many
seem to be very keen," says Datuk Yeow.

Meanwhile, those who are resisting, like Ms. Lim, continue to live in
limbo. She still stays in the 30-year-old, four-bedroom house she shared
with her husband. Behind the house is an expanse of broken concrete that
was once her farm. There is a stench of rotting pig carcasses that were
left by the soldiers in the broken feed mill.

When her husband was alive, the couple made between 2,000 ringgit and
10,000 ringgit a month, she says. They spent all their money on upgrading
the farm, putting in more pig pens and an oxidation pond in the hope of
meeting the stringent hygiene standards required for an export license.
Just before her husband died, they had 4,000 pigs.

Shuffling around a gas-fired wok, Ms. Lim drops diced garlic and sliced
squid into the sizzling oil, then fries and scoops the mixture onto a plate
of rice for a customer. She makes 1,000 ringgit a month, "just enough for
daily survival," and tries not to think about the 300,000 ringgit she owes
the bank, or the 300,000 ringgit more owed to feed suppliers.

Now she can't imagine what the future holds. Her life, she says, "has
become directionless."