Extracted from Malaysiakini

Landmark native land rights case begins on Monday
Tony Thien
Jan 14, 06 5:10pm

A landmark case involving a group of Iban native customary rights (NCR) land owners fighting for their land rights begins hearing in the Kuching High Court on Monday.

The case is a simple one. The group led by Jalan anak Paran of Tatau in Bintulu Division whose customary rights on land have been extinguished by a gazette notification under the provisions of the Sarawak Land Code wants the court to say that it is against the constitution and the law for the government to extinguish such rights and give the land other than for a public purpose.

In this case, individual family plots on which the Land and Survey Department had carried out a survey and native customary rights were established was given to Borneo Paper and Pulp Sdn Bhd for the setting up of its mill.

The number of Iban NCR land owners originally affected is more than 13 plaintiffs who filed the court action in 1998 against the relevant authorities and company.

 
One group had actually accepted the compensation offered, another disputed the quantum of the compensation and a third group - the plaintiffs - objected totally to their land being taken away and given to the company.

The government had gazetted the extinguishment of the native customary rights in acquiring the land for public purpose. But it later turned out that the land was to be used for the setting up of a paper and pulp mill.

Unconstitutional act

See Chee How, one of the lawyers representing the land owners, told malaysiakini that the action taken by his clients was to prove that the government was in fact going against the relevant provisions of the law.

"Our contention is the government's act is unconstitutional," he said. 

"In other words, we're dealing with a constitutional issue," See said, adding that the case is one step further from the most important decision handed down by the Federal Court in the Nor Nyawai case involving a large area claimed as NCR land that formed part of a provisional lease issued to a plantation company in Bintulu.

Baru Bian, a well-known NCR land case lawyer, will also appear for the plaintiffs, originally 15 in number and now 13 following the demise of the remaining two.

Sarawak Iban Dayak Association (Sadia) secretary-general Nicholas Mujah told malaysiakini that the Iban plaintiffs had waited for seven years for the case to be heard.