Extracted from Malaysiakini

Dayak villagers in David vs Goliath battle

Keruah Usit | Oct 14, 09 12:02pm

Thirty families from Kampung Rejoi and Kampung Bojong in Bengoh, 42 kilometres from Sarawak's capital Kuching, have launched a legal suit against Naim Cendera, a powerful construction conglomerate with close links to Sarawak's Chief Minister Taib Mahmud.

v:shapes="_x0000_s1026">The Bidayuh families are protesting that Naim Cendera seized their native customary rights (NCR) land, in order to begin construction on the controversial RM310 million Bengoh Dam.

The villagers say Naim Cendera and the government have turned a blind eye to the farmers' ancestral ownership of the land, and their livelihood.

The Sarawak government has touted the Bengoh Dam as a source of water supply for Kuching until 2030. However, the dam contract has been dogged by allegations of corruption.

Naim Cendera was awarded the contract without competing for it, and promptly sub-contracted the construction to Sinohydro, a company from China, for RM145 million, benefitting from an instant windfall of RM165 million.

The deal stirred further outrage because the chairperson of Naim Cendera, Abdul Hamid Sepawi, is the cousin of Taib, the Minister of Finance and Minister of Planning and Natural Resources.

The villagers claim Naim Cendera and the government had decided that some of their NCR had "no value", and in some other instances, paid only "token" compensation.

The suit was filed on October 12 at the High Court in Sabah and Sarawak at Kuching, by Baru Bian and Associates, Advocates and Solicitors.

Evictions "unlawful and unconstitutional"

According to the law suit, the attempted acquisition of their NCR land contravenes the Sarawak Land Code and Article 13 of the Malaysian Constitution.

The Sarawak Land Code recognises NCR land, as reinforced by recent landmark court decisions, such as Madeli Salleh and Rumah Nor Nyawai.

These court rulings supported Sarawakians' NCR rights against intrusion by companies.

Article 13 of the Constitution states that "no person may be deprived of property save in accordance with law. No law may provide for the compulsory acquisition or use of property without adequate compensation".

The villagers pointed out that the government had not surveyed the land the villagers claim under NCR, prior to allowing Naim Cendera to start clearing the area for the proposed dam.

The suit laid out an impressive array of oral histories of the Bidayuh communities in the area. The history of the villagers' settlement of the area was traced back to the 19th century, citing documentary evidence from the Sarawak Gazette of 1885 and the journal "Tour Among the Dyaks of Sarawak" dating from 1858-1861.

The legal suit said historical records showed Bojong and Rejoi villages had been settled during the reign of James Brooke, Sarawak's "White Rajah".

Villagers say dam will cripple livelihood

The Bengoh villagers say the dam project would cripple their livelihood, and that of generations to come.

"We have crops like pepper and rubber, and we also go hunting in the jungle." said Bodui anak Maron, one of the six plaintiffs in the law suit.

"We in Kampong Bojong do not wish to move because we are farmers and we know that the land (they want to move us to) will not be enough for us to plant rice, plant pepper, plant cocoa and so forth," he said.

Threat of more evictions

Rural Sarawakians have grown increasingly frustrated with logging, plantation and dam-building companies moving onto land they claim as their own under NCR. These well-connected companies have been backed by the Sarawak government and the police, often with force.

According to Bernama, Second Minister of Planning and Natural Resources Awang Tengah said on Oct 12 that the Sarawak government would evict those claiming NCR status over land designated as "state land".

Awang Tengah was quoted by the Borneo Post on October 13 as saying the Sarawak Land Code only recognised 'temuda' (land cleared from virgin forests, farmed and occupied by the natives).

According to See Chee How, one of the senior land rights lawyers representing the Bengoh villagers, "Such a statement would be directly contradicting the landmark Madeli and Nor Nyawai court rulings.

 The Federal Court, the highest court in Malaysia, found in the Madeli case that NCR extends not only to temuda or cultivated land, but also to pulau or communal forest, and pemakai menoa, or territorial domain.

"There have been over a hundred NCR land cases filed against the Sarawak government. This is because state ministers are ignorant regarding the laws on NCR land, or they choose to ignore the laws, and blind themselves to the decisions of the courts," the state PKR information chief argued.