Source: Malaysiakini.com
"Legalism must be tempered with understanding, compassion and consideration when dealing with the common folk who, after having tilled the good earth and toiled for generations on the land, find themselves out in the cold overnight through a stroke of the administrative pen."
MCPX
This is Suhakam’ message to the Sabah government, the Forest Department in particular, which stated recently that “mob rule must not be allowed to dictate public policy” and “the tyranny of the minority should not be allowed to lead to the breakdown of the Forest Reserve system which has prevailed for nearly 100 years”.
The human rights commission also stressed that “legalism renders them to the possibility of facing possible forcible eviction from the very land they had worked as their own and being reduced in the process to the dubious status of landless peasants, much as in the poverty-striken regions of rural Bangladesh, Africa and elsewhere.
“It is fine for the government to gazette land as forest reserve. But why can’t they be a bit more caring and ‘exclude’ from the gazette those areas already occupied and developed by village settlers,” is the puzzled query from Suhakam vice-president Simon Sipaun, a former Sabah state secretary.
“Many simple villagers are getting a raw deal at the end of the day because they are left with virtually nothing after having settled new land and toiled there for generations.”
“To add insult to injury, the same land is more often than not, later alienated to a company or individuals who have influence in society. The latter apparently take advantage of the fact that many villagers are too ignorant of the law and don’t know how to go about establishing native customary rights over their land.”
We listen to all sides
Suhakam, according to Sipaun, recently invited the Land and Survey director as well as the Forestry director to have a dialogue on various issues on which they were advised in advance but there was no response. Instead, the Forestry Department sent a public statement and the Land and Survey Department kept quiet.
“It’s no use issuing public statements,” pointed out Sipaun. “It’s important to meet and thrash out the various issues. We are here to listen to all sides.”
“Forest Department Director Sam Mannen should be willing to give a face-to-face hearing to those who have so many complaints, not just look at maps in his office or fly over affected areas and then make decisions. There’s nothing wrong in at least giving people a hearing. This is what we at Suhakam do all the time. Hearing does not mean agreeing.”
Declaring settled land as part of a forest reserve or alienating such land allegedly to the mighty and powerful, Sipaun has discovered, is the tip of the iceberg in Sabah on land issues.
Suhakam, according to Sipaun, has since uncovered discrepancies in the settlement of land issues in several areas in the state.
He cites Kampung Tomis in Ranau, Kampung Bonor in Keningau, and Kampung Mount Pock and Tanjung Nagos in Sempoerna along the east coast as some recent examples which depict the many facets of the land problem in Sabah.
Kampung Tomis, a human settlement complete with a balairaya (community hall) and a graveyard dating back several generations was recently declared a forest reserve by the Forest Department. This has exposed the people to the possibility of eviction at the pleasure of the authorities concerned.
The risk of eviction is real, said Sipaun, adding that recently in Kampung Koiboton in Paitan, “people in Forest Department vehicles and enforcement uniforms got the people to vacate the place ‘temporarily’ under the pretext of a census survey and after they left, torched their houses.”
“We wanted to hold an Open Hearing but the people affected unfortunately jumped the gun and took the matter to court. An Open Hearing would have bolstered their case in court.”
“The Tomis people claim that their village was gazetted as a forest reserve without any ground survey,” gathered Sipaun during a visit to the kampung by a Suhakam team. The team suspects the gazetting may have been done based on old aerial surveys.
Forest Department maps show the village is actually outside the Tenompok Forest Reserve (class 1), gazetted in 1984 after preliminary notification in 1962. The Forest Reserve land at 4000 to 5000 feet is vulnerable to erosion and landslides.
A first class forest reserve, by definition as understood by Suhakam, is one which has not been altered by human hands for any purpose whatsoever except perhaps for natives within the vicinity collecting jungle produce solely for their own use but sometimes allowed to sell these as well in the nearest jungle produce market in town.
There is some dispute as to whether Tomis has encroached into Tenompok but the Forest Department’s suspicion has fallen on the villagers since periodic landslides have blocked the Ranau-Kota Kinabalu highway several times in recent past.
Forbidden to harvest crop
The Forest Department’s public statement doesn’t mention four other villages within the vicinity of Tomis, points out Sipaun. These are Tomis Lama and Terolobau which have encroached into Tenompok; and Tinatasan and Ratau where the houses are outside Tenompok but the lands worked are within the Forest Reserve. The question is why haven’t these four other kampungs come to the attention of the Forest Department and instead Tomis has been singled out although the Department’s maps show it as outside the Forest Reserve?
Similarly, Kampung Bonor has now been declared a Forest Reserve within the Mount Mandalom Forest Reserve although the nearest “jungle” is some distance away. Again, this means the residents risk “eviction” at any time.
Suhakam, according to Sipaun, has since established that the Kampung Bonor area was gazetted on March 15, 1984.
Meanwhile, residents of Kampung Mount Pock and Tanjung Nagos have now been reminded by the erection of signboards by the Forest Department that they are also in fact occupying a first class Forest Reserve.
“The villagers tell us that they have been there for nearly a quarter century, opening up the land for agriculture and when they planted oil palm, they were forbidden to harvest their crops,” said Sipaun. “What is even more mysterious, a company has been given the right to harvest the oil palm fruits. The company concerned has also been allowed to plant even more oil palm on the village land.”
The Forest Department’s stand is that the company concerned is a state-owned subsidiary of Saham Amanah Sabah and will benefit all the unit trust holders who are now only looking at debts incurred to buy their stake which at one time plunged from RM 1 per unit to O.10 sen and has only marginally improved since then. “The oil palm trees will eventually be destroyed by the company and replaced with jungle trees,” said the Forest Department in its public statement. “We cannot afford to spend RM 6,000 per hectare to do this work.”
Suhakam has concluded, according to Sipaun, that there are many people affected by the various land issues who cannot be faulted for “not applying to register their native customary rights to land”.
“In fact, all the people that we have interviewed so far did establish their claims but the government either did not respond or rejected them very much later if there was a request from certain companies for the same land. These companies then end up with the land,” discovered Sipaun.
