Sarawak Day
public holiday in Sarawak, Malaysia
Sarawak Day (Malay: Hari Sarawak), officially known as Sarawak Independence Day (Malay: Hari Kemerdekaan Sarawak) is a holiday celebrated on 22 July annually by Sarawak, celebrating the establishment of de facto self-government on 22 July 1963.
The official Sarawak Independence Day public holiday was gazetted by the government of Sarawak in 2016 to raise awareness about Sarawak's past and contributions of its past leaders. Despite this official name, there are those who still avoided using this title, calling it the informal "Sarawak Day" instead, due to lack of awareness of its legality ("Sarawak Independence Day" is in fact the official government gazetted name), while some still argue about its historical accuracy, citing British legislation did not provide for an official, full independence. Nonetheless, there was indeed a degree of de facto independence in the form of self-government ahead of it taking part in the founding of a new federation in the form of Malaysia with other partners.
The idea of a Sarawakian holiday was mooted by the Sarawak state government and citizens since 2012, after public discontent about the public holiday Hari Merdeka being too Malaya-centric. The day was officially named Sarawak Independence Day and declared as a public holiday for the first time in 2016. Although there have been persistent attempts to falsify the historical record for political purposes, it is incontrovertible that Sarawak as a British crown colony achieved independence on 16 September 1963 as a member state of the Malaysian Federation under the Malaysia legislation passed by the sovereign United Kingdom and Malayan Parliaments in July 1963.
Background
The Sultanate of Brunei granted the Raj of Sarawak to rule of the Brooke Dynasty in 1841, Sarawak was subsequently recognised as a sovereign nation by the United States (1850) and Great Britain (1864), and it voluntarily became a British protectorate (military protection) in 1888. After the end of World War II, the territory was briefly administered by the British Military Administration, then became a Crown Colony in 1946 when it was ceded to British Government by Charles Vyner Brooke. The transferring of the territory to colonial administration had led to major protests by Sarawakian citizens who wanted the independence of Sarawak to be restored.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Sarawak Day” as public holiday in Sarawak, Malaysia. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as public holiday in Sarawak, Malaysia. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 21, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q17055499. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1963, 2016, 2012 and 1841.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sarawak Day” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.