Six farmers from Mambang Diawan in Kampar, Perak have been remanded till Monday after they were allegedly involved in a fight with a group claiming to be workers from the developer that the farmers have a land dispute with.

The farmers are being investigated under Section 147 of the Penal Code which deals with punishment for rioting, said their lawyer KS Bawani.

Eight of the men who are allegedly employees of the developer have also been remanded, she added.

“We asked for the remand to be rejected because this is a land dispute case and there’s already a pending court order, but the court decided that the remand will be until Monday,” Bawani told Malaysiakini when contacted today.

She said that the farmers have already lodged a complaint and a deposition has already been approved for Oct 27 at the Kampar Magistrate’s Court.

The developer should settle this land dispute in court, she said, but instead they had sent their workers to disturb the farmers on their land.

The men, who purportedly identified themselves as workers from the developer’s company, came to the disputed land on Thursday and a fight broke out between them and the farmers, she said.

The fight resulted in several of the farmers, most of them above 50 years old, being injured, she said.

Both parties lodged police reports at the Kampar police district headquarters the same night, she said, but the next day both parties were called back to the station where they were all subsequently arrested.

Seven farmers were arrested, she said, but they managed to push for the release of one of the farmers, who is 65 years old and had been pushed to the ground during the altercation.

The state land, which the farmers had legally worked on for more than 40 years after being granted farming permits, is now a subject of dispute after the state government abruptly sold it to a developer.

Bawani said that the farmers had lodged over 40 police reports on this issue over the years.