For the first time in
the history of Malaysia, natives from three different tribes have
filed a joint land rights litigation.
Yesterday, representatives
from the Kelabit, Penan and Lun Bawang communities of Upper Limbang,
Sarawak, on the island of Borneo filed a joint land rights
litigation at the Miri High Court in which they are claiming native
customary rights over 1770 km2 of tropical forests in the Limbang
river basin.
The joint claim over an area twice the size of Singapore is directed
against the Sarawak state government and four Malaysian logging and
plantation companies that had been given concessions over the native
lands without the communities’ consent. The companies listed as
defendants are Ravenscourt Sdn Bhd, Billion Venture Sdn Bhd, Limba
Jaya Timber Sdn Bhd and Kubang Sri Jaya Sdn Bhd. Ravenscourt is a
wholly-owned subsidiary of the Samling (3938.HK) group which has recently been
blacklisted by the Norwegian government for its involvement in
illegal activities and environmentally destructive logging.
The Kelabit, Penan and Lun Bawang plaintiffs have been living in the
Upper Limbang region for hundreds of years. Since the early 1980s, the
region has been logged under a number of logging concessions.
Currently, the area is being threatened by a major dam project on the
Limbang river and the conversion of secondary forests into oil palm
and paper tree plantations. All this while, the native communities
had no say whatsoever on the use of their native lands by the Sarawak
government and had only received ridiculous compensation payments by
some logging companies who made millions of the dollars from logging
the tropical hardwoods in the region.
After having lodged the case, representatives of the native
communities displayed a banner in front of the Miri High Court
building which read "Indigenous people taking action for change to
save the last remaining Sarwak rainforest." Currently, close to 200
native communities from Sarawak have challenged the state government
over its land rights policies. The native land issue is also a heated
subject during the runup to the next state election which is to be
held before July 2011.
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