Divers Paths to Justice - English - Forest Peoples Programme

Divers Paths to Justice: Legal pluralism and the rights of indigenous peoples inSoutheast Asiapublicly acknowledged that his Department was incapable of handling theland applications submitted by natives. At that time, the departmentreceived over 40,000 applications for native title annually and was only ableto process 12,500. As a result, over 265,000 applications for native titleremain outstanding. 33This massive backlog of applications for land titles lies at the heart of manyof the current conflicts over native land rights. With such a large number ofunsettled land claims it is inevitable that overlapping claims for land aresubmitted and boundaries between lands never properly delineated.Human rights violation: the Kundasang Public InquiryIn this section of the paper I look closely at a landmark complaint ofviolation of native peoples’ land rights that was brought before the SabahHuman Rights Commission in 2003. The highly publicised land disputetook place between eighteen farmers living on the boundary of KinabaluPark and the Desa Highland Company (a flower farm run by a subsidiary ofthe Rural Development Corporation, a State entity that falls under theMinistry of Agriculture and Agro-Based Industry 34 ). Desa HighlandCompany’s activities around Mt Kinabalu include the State-runchrysanthemum farm on land that was excised from Kinabalu Park in 1984.It is not possible to trace the very beginnings of the 2003 land case.However, in the public eye (and as reported in the newspapers) the legalorigins of the battled started in 1989 when a group of eighteen villagersmade an application for seventy four acres of land in the village ofKundasang, on the southern boundary of Kinabalu Park. They had theapproval of the village headman, and one of the farmers claimed his fatherhad taken care of the land before him and that they used to “harvest damarand rattan from the land” when he was a child. 35 The farmers cleared the33 Sabahkini 200934 Ministry of Agriculture and Agro-based Industry 200635 New Sabah Times 2004Claims of past hunting and collection of forest products are commonly used by95