This news caught my attention a few days ago. One, I thought this kind of issue have been solve before the last State Election and two, that Sarawak will not have anymore cases of overlapping claim on communal land.
I am in the opinion that as long as the government do not “recognise” the communal boundary, the timber raiders will still keep on bulldozing and extracting timber of our land. Now, it may be First Binary Sdn. Bhd., in future it could be another operator benefiting from the same concession license.
This will only stop if the government take back the licenses and ensure the Land and Survey Dept. do a perimeter survey to verify and justify the claims on communal land. Otherwise, the legal firm will keep on making money out of the poor villager for all the legal proceedings and trials.
To open and accept a case, the legal firm may charge a minimum fee of RM3,000 nowadays. And, thats the beginning of a very very long legal process which (in our case in Ulu Krian) have taken more than 10 years!!!
Actually, it was not the only case. I think we have a lot of cases like that in Sarawak. Just we are not alert of things going around us. That is our habits. In my place, my grandfather and couples of longhouse people was lock up for defending their own lands and right. How on earth that could happens? They are just want to defending their homelands but yet they are being lock-up. Where is justice in Sarawak?. But it was not in the newspaper (becouse nobody will cares). But now the same situation happens. We are in the process sueing the illegal logging campany. But, that is not the main point. during our struggles, no leaders are stand up to fight with us. Where is our leader that we choosed? Afraid huh?