The Penan community of Ba Jawi in Upper Baram today lodged a lawsuit against timber giant Samling and the Sarawak government to stake their claim over 15,000 ha of primary rainforest.

NONE The suit was lodged this morning by Lija Agan ( left ), chief of the Ba Jawi village, and three other plaintiffs, who claimed that the land - which contains high-conservation tropical rainforest - has been used since by countless generations of their forefathers.

The area covered by the Ba Jawi claim is a key region of the Penan Peace Park , a forest area measuring 163,000 ha that they had marked in November last year in a bid to challenge the Sarawak government's earmarking of the area for logging.

The nature reserve is inhabited by 17 Penan communities.

There is an urgent need for the land urgently to be protected against logging by timber companies such as Samling, the Ba Jawi said in their statement of claims.

azlan “About 200 years ago, the ancestors of the plaintiffs were living in and around Ba Jawi, exercising native customary rights over the land in Ba Jawi and its vicinity", the statement reads, according to a statement by indigenous peoples advocacy group Bruno Manser Fonds (BMF), which is based in Switzerland.

“They hunted and gathered food from the forests and lived on sago (uvut) as their staple food. The plaintiffs are presently exercising these rights over that same land."

The Penan claim that a logging licence held by a subsidiary of Samling group of companies, Samling Plywood, should be revoked since it was issued by the state government in an “unlawful, improper, unconstitutional and, therefore, null and void" manner.

NONE The new suit - prepared with the assistance of BMF - is the fifth over native customary rights lodged by Eastern Penan communities since 1998.

The Ba Jawi will be represented by the legal firm of Sarawak PKR chief Baru Bian.

According to BMF, the governments of Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei had, in 2007, signed the tripartite ‘Heart of Borneo Declaration’ in which they committed themselves to protecting the rainforests of central Borneo.

However, the declaration has not been followed by much action on the ground.

Last December, Sarawak's director of forests, Len Talif Salleh had condemned the Penan Peace Park as an "illegal" project that "tainted Sarawak's image".