Muruts win right to stay on ancestral land

Luke Rintod


About 100 natives gathered outside the Tawau High Court to celebrate their victory against eight companies which tried to evict them from their ancestral lands.


TAWAU: In yet another landmark decision in support of native customary rights (NCR) in Sabah and Sarawak, the Tawau High Court dismissed with cost the application of eight companies to evict Murut natives living in Kampung Serudong Laut here.

The court allowed the natives to remain on their ancestral lands.

In passing his judgment, Judicial Commissioner Douglas Primus allowed the villagers’ application to set aside the order for possession obtained by eight companies against them.

He ruled that the natives, who were defendants in this case, could remain on the land until the disposal of the matter by way of a trial.

However, Primus declined to exercise his discretion to convert the application by the companies into a writ action.

Primus also ordered the eight companies not to exercise self-help to evict or interfere with the natives’ occupation of the land, until the case is disposed of in a trial.

If a trial is to commence then the companies, which are plaintiffs in the case, must first file a fresh new writ of action which many believe, if they go ahead, would expose the “serious involvement” of powerful politicians.

It is also likely to open the lid on how the authorities granted the eight companies “rights” to the land.

The natives had claimed that the eight companies actually were under only one management.

The Serudong Laut case has been closely watched as it involved established NCR lands given out to companies only recently.

Since colonial British days, the NCR is a law where natives, and only natives, are allowed to establish ownership of land by providing proof that they have inhabited and toiled on the land.

In the Serudong Laut case, about 2,200 acres of land were alienated to the eight companies in 2008, against contention and proof by the natives that the land they occupied had always been their ancestral land they inherited from their forefathers.

The villagers were represented by counsel Kong Hong Ming, who acted for them on a”pro-bono” basis.

Strong protests

On Feb 24, 2011, the eight companies obtained from the Tawau High Court, order of possession evicting the villagers at Serudong Laut from the land recently alienated to the companies.

But the villagers refused to budge, claiming that they had occupied the land for at least eight generations.
Soon after the Feb 24 judgment, the companies’ agents went to the land and on June 29, 2011 felled four houses by sawing off their columns.

They then warned the villagers that more houses would be demolished.

Ironically when this took place, some of the villagers and their community leaders were attending the national inquiry on land by Suhakam in Tawau, while others attended a workshop on native customary land by Kong at Kampung Serudong Baru.

Following the incident, the villagers of Kampung Serudong Laut have strongly protested against the encroachment of their customary rights over the land by the companies.

There have been meetings and dialogue between the villagers and the companies, police as well as the land office.

‘Leave us alone’

Meanwhile, Kampung Serudong Laut village chief Mitter Tungkat expressed his relief and gratitude, on behalf of the villagers, to the court for setting aside the order of possession obtained by the eight companies.

“In 1977, the Forestry Department had confirmed that the area occupied and applied by the native community in Kampung Serudong was a native reserve for the Murut people,” Tungkat said.

“As a community leader, I hope that the companies will not harass our villagers anymore and we only ask them to respect our traditional way of life and to understand our need for survival in our ancestral land.

“We just want to be left alone. Most of us have been here for as long as eight generations, even before the British colonist or any form of government administration,” Mitter said.

Said Kong: “I am happy that justice prevails today. It is a landmark decision, for the native communities in Sabah.”