TAKING FIGHT TO COURT: The villagers assembling outside the courthouse to voice their displeasure.
KUCHING: A big crowd comprising mostly residents of several villages in Melikin, Balai Ringin, gathered at the court complex here yesterday while their representatives filed a suit against two plantation companies for allegedly encroaching into their native customary rights (NCR) land.
The suit was filed by their legal counsel See Chee How, a lawyer of Messrs Baru Bian and Advocates. The land in dispute is about 12,000 hectares.
“We have been instructed by our clients from 17 villages to file a summons of claims and court injunction against the two companies,” said See, who is also Batu Lintang assemblyman and state PKR vice-chairman.
Also present to lend support to the villagers was another PKR Sarawak vice-chairman Ali Biju, the Krian assemblyman.
The villagers have decided to file the suit after a failed dialogue at the Serian police station on Tuesday aimed at resolving the dispute between the two companies and the NCR landowners.
The dispute arose after the villagers discovered in November last year that their gardens, fruit trees and cash crops were destroyed, and their land, which they have occupied for more than 100 years, was cleared for the planting of oil palm.
The companies claimed that the land belonged to them via provisional leases to plant oil palm, but the more than 300 villagers said the land was theirs, handed down by their ancestors.