DAP rep: Sarawaks native land conflict getting worse

comments     Tony Thien     Published     Updated

DAP's sole elected representative in the Sarawak Legislative Assembly yesterday claimed that the on-going conflict between native customary rights land (NCR) owners and plantation companies and other land developers has continued to deteriorate over the last year.

Lands which were resided by the natives after 1958 continued to be disregarded by the government as native land, the state assemblyperson for Kidurong Chiew Chin Sing said during the debate on the Supply Bill 2003 on Wednesday.

"The government may say it is state land. But to the natives and to their understanding and the practice of their own adat (custom), they (the natives) say that it is their land."

He added: "It is not ignorance of the law but a conflict of two value systems, where according to the adat of the natives, and for hundred of years now, land which they have settled on, where they have felled trees, planted crops and fruit trees and where they have built their longhouses and established burial grounds, the land becomes their farming land," Chiew said.

"The livelihood of the natives and everything else depends on it."

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