Given the delicate native customary rights (NCR) land issue in Sarawak in recent times, it is not surprising that the subject dominates any meeting with Suhakam in the state.

So it was too at a Suhakam event in Kuching on Tuesday.

What was supposed to be a Suhakam session involving the media and NGOs on human rights turned into a NCR land issue forum articulated by civil society groups present.

A few hundred participants from several NGOs representing various interest groups from the Dayak, Malay and Chinese communities in and around Kuching heard talks by panel speakers, including Suhakam commissioner N Siva Subramaniam, Dr Andrew Aeria of Unimas and William Chan of Utusan Sarawak, a Bahasa Malaysia daily.

But if the question-and-answer session that followed was any indication, those in attendance were clearly more interested in issues related to NCR land.

Participant Bujang Bakar from Samarahan complained about their kampong NCR land of some 500 acres, being given away by the state government to a company owned by a well-connected political family for oil palm cultivation.

According to Bujang, the land acquired was originally for the purpose of establishing a wildlife sanctuary. He claimed that it had been leased to a company in which a brother of Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud had a controlling interest.

Later, he showed a printed leaflet of several photographs of the land in Samarahan near Kuching which the kampung people had already cleared and planted oil palm on, together with a historical write-up beginning with the cultivation of cash crops by the villagers.

“It is not idle land, it is our kampung NCR land,” he told Malaysiakini.

Not recognised

An Iban from Kanowit also raised a similar complaint about NCR land being taken away and given to companies for oil palm plantation without prior consultation with the local communities and without compensation being paid.

Orang Ulu National Association (OUNA) treasurer-general Mathew Jao from Ulu Baram said the Orang Ulu settlements in Long Lama, Tinjar and Apoh area were also losing out because most of their longhouses have not been gazetted and recognised as settlements by the government.

He cited as an example Petronas' plan to lay a gas pipe through kampung land from Miri to Long Lama and how it becomes difficult to determine where the affected kampung land is due to the fact that the longhouses have not been gazetted.

“True, some longhouses have been compensated when their land is affected by the pipe project but generally the problem is there when the longhouses are not gazetted together with the kampung land on which fruit trees have been planted and food crops grown on the land,” Jao said.

He told Malaysiakini that it has also become a problem to apply for housing loans from the EPF to improve longhouses that are not gazetted by the government.

Meanwhile, speaker Andrew Aeria said the media and NGOs should work closely together so that good research on alternative scenarios and ideas done by NGOs could be disseminated by the media.