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MIRI – Sarawak’s politicians must do more to protect the welfare of natives still living in the forests of interior regions who are embroiled in land disputes with logging and plantation companies, said Baram social activist Willie Kajan.
Willie, who is a local native tour guide for Mulu National Park and northern Sarawak’s interior, said the rural natives often claim that elected representatives have been very slow to look into their plight when it comes to land disputes.
“Those natives living in logging zones and areas where oil palm projects are spreading often claim that their plight falls on deaf ears.
“Their complaints of their native land being trespassed (upon) and bulldozed by the developers often go unheard,” Willie said in an interview with The Vibes yesterday.
“The natives have complained to the authorities, state government departments and ministries, and even to their local YBs (elected representatives). But sadly, disputes are seldom resolved in favour of the affected natives.”
“That is why very often, the affected natives had to set up human blockades and physical protection to confront the logging and plantation giants,” he added.
He was reacting to The Vibes’ report yesterday on a blockade set up by natives in the forests of Nanga Seridan in Baram. The natives were protesting against alleged harassment and trespassing by workers of an oil palm giant.
The natives from the Rumah Labang longhouse have set up physical barriers and gathered en masse in the forests that are being bulldozed, said Sahabat Alam Malaysia (SAM) ground officers who had gone to the protest site yesterday to check on the welfare of the locals.
The Vibes spoke to Sarawak SAM ground coordinator Jok Jau Evong and was told that the protests had been peaceful and there had not been any physical confrontation with the plantation workers.
Nanga Seridan is located in the Tinjar sub-district, about 150-km inland from Miri city.
SAM president Meenakshi Raman, in an immediate press release, called on the state authorities and local politicians to look into the plight of the natives who alleged they were being victimised.
“The longhouse folks of Rumah Labang had alerted us (SAM) of the large-scale destruction of their forests by those clearing the land for an oil palm project,” she said.
“The natives there said they have native customary right status over the forests in their vicinity. They have been living there since the early 1950s.
“They have physical proof in the form of properties, matured rubber trees and crops, and even their ancestral graveyards.”
According to Meenakshi, the natives allege that the oil palm company had been trying to clear the forests to set up large plantations since 2018 but the locals had objected repeatedly against such projects that would destroy their land.
“They had tried to talk to the company management, the local elected politicians, the state agencies like the Land and Survey Department, the local district council and other agencies,” she said.
“However, the company has sent workers and heavy equipment and has bulldozed the land to build roads and drains,” she said, leaving the longhouse residents with no choice but to start physical protests.
Meenakshi also called on the politicians and state authorities to stop the plantation from further encroachment and for urgent dialogues to resolve the issue. – The Vibes, June 21, 2023