Fourteen landowners were evicted from the site of Kuching City's second bridge project spanning Sungai Sarawak after the Land and Survey Department mobilised a 180-member team, backed by 300 police officers, to tear down their houses in Kampung Bintawa Hulu.

Members of the evicted families are putting up with relatives in another part of the village.

Earlier this week, the Kuching High Court rejected their application for leave to appeal against eviction notices on the ground that they did have a reasonable case.

The group of landowners had rejected the quantum of compensations offered by the authorities for their land, house and crops, saying that it was too low.

They had instead requested a reassessment of their properties from the developers, which was subsequently rejected.

The land on which they had resided was reverted to the state in Dec 1999 after their native customary rights were extinguished under the provisions of the Sarawak Land Code. The landowners were offered what they claimed as inadequate compensation.

Dissatisfied, they referred the matter to the court for arbitration.

While waiting for their case to be heard in court, the landowners decided to stay put on their properties. The bridge project nevertheless went ahead leading to several eviction notices being issued to them.

According to the group's lawyer Dominique Ng Kim Ho, the last eviction notice was issued on Jan 3 this year and had already expired.

He told malaysiakini today that although Kuching High Court judge Ian Chin had rejected the application for leave to appeal against the eviction notices, that decision is appealable.

"That decision was made four days ago, and under the law my client has one month to lodge the grounds of appeal against the High Court's decision," he said.

Demolition squads

However at about 9am today, a total of nine demolition squads arrived with sledge-hammers and other machineries to pull down the houses, some of which are concrete buildings.

"I had never seen such a big team as this before," Ng said.

Some 300 police personnel and about 180 enforcement personnel from the department were present.

"The scene was heart rending," Ng said. "This is just not the way to treat simple and ordinary people."

The group's lawyer said he was disappointed with the attitude of some of the local officials.

In a massive demolition exercise such as this, the superintendent of Kuching Land Division Arthur Charles Bateman was not even present, he lamented.

Ng was told that if he wanted to complain, he should have done when state attorney-general JC Fong was in court earlier this week to argue the case for the government.

Ng said he would meet his clients at one of the houses in the village later today "to hear their views and to take instructions from them on what further action to take."

He added that his clients are not rich people and would also have to consider the legal costs involved.