Pusat Komas strongly condemns the arrest of 13 indigenous people from the Temiar tribe who organised a peaceful blockade to prevent logging companies from encroaching their customary land. Although given assurance that the issue will be settled in January, no action was taken by the Kelantan state government and the land continued to be raped of its resources.

The Temiar people could not wait for empty promises anymore and decided to protect their customary land from the logging companies by setting up the blockade.

We are utterly disgusted with the way the police treated the Temiar people by burning down the blockade and at the same time also the adjacent rest area. The 13 arrested were also denied legal representation as their lawyer Siti Zubedah Kasim was also arrested and was prevented from meeting the 13 who were arrested even after repeated requests. They were put through hours of interrogation and not given any food to eat from morning and were only released at 11pm at night.

This is total disregard to Article 5(3) of the federal constitution which says that “A person arrested must be told why he is arrested as soon as possible and be allowed to consult and be defended by a lawyer of his choice”. The actions by the police also violated Article 5 and 6 of the United Nation Declaration of Human Rights (UNDHR) which says that "no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" and "Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law".

The police here have acted in a total inhuman manner and total disregard to the federal constitution and UNDHR. We wonder who are they serving, the people or the logging companies? The police should in fact place the best interest of the people above the irresponsible profit-making logging companies.

‘Orang Asli’ land issues have long been the hot topic affecting thousands of orang asli in Malaysia. For instance around 2,000 Orang Asli protested strongly against the proposed Orang Asli land title policy by the Federal government on March 17, 2010. Both the federal and state government should start recognizing the orang asli right to land and to ensure a halt to all forms of violation against these indigenous peoples of Malaysia.

State governments should recognise and take effective measures to protect the indigenous peoples land matters and exercise ‘Free prior and informed consent’ of Orang Asli on matters affecting their lands and conduct consultations in good faith. These are principles contained in the United Nations Declarations on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples 2007. Incidentally Malaysia voted in favour of this declaration twice without any reservations.

We urge the Kelantan state government to engage the affected Temiar orang asli communities and to immediately find a solution to this problem. The culture and the lifestyle of the indigenous people are strongly connected with the land they live on.

We also urge that action be taken against the police officers responsible for detaining them without following proper procedures and also for violating their basic rights to legal representation and human treatment.

The writer is from the Grassroots Advocacy Project under the NGO Pusat Komas