Thirty-three Bidayuh tribe families in Sarawak scored a legal victory today when the Kuching High Court dismissed an application by a plantation company to stop a suit over their customary land rights.

Court deputy registrar Azhahari Kamal Ramli dismissed oil palm plantation company Tetangga Akraab's application to strike out the suit by the 33 families from Serian, about 60 km from Kuching, on the grounds that there were triable issues in the case.

The company had claimed that the suit by the families were frivolous and an abuse of the process of the court.

The families had filed their suit against Tetangga and the Sarawak state government last May over alleged encroachment by the company into the disputed land.

The families are seeking a court declaration that they had acquired native customary rights over an area of land in Serian which had been leased out by the state government to Tetangga.

They also want the court to rule that the state Land and Survey Department had acted wrongfully in issuing the lease to the land to the company.

They said that the lease overlapped their native rights and breached the rights accorded to them by the Federal Constitution.

Genuine claim

Tetangga had filed its application to strike out the families' suit in June this year.

The company had claimed that the families had no customary rights over the land and that the land's title had been transferred to the company as a result of the lease issued by the state government.

Tetangga also claimed that the government had gazetted the disputed land a protected forest in 1959, thus extinguishing any customary rights to the land.

After hearing the application on Aug 15, Azhahari today ruled that the case involved a genuine claim of native customary rights over land and that the Bidayuh families' suit should be allowed to proceed.

The court added that the matter would be heard at a date to be fixed later.