KOTA KINABALU: Sabah's interior Murut folks are now hopeful of getting back their ancestral land with the Chief Minister's assurance to protect native customary land.
The villagers of Kg Balantos, Kg Salung and Kg Sinikaluan in Sabah's interior Pagalungan in Nabawan district about 200km from here said that they were extremely happy that Datuk Seri Hajiji Noor was looking into their plight.
"We were deeply touched that our Chief Minister will look into our plight and his assurance that our native rights are protected," the group said in a joint statement.
They said that after so many years, this was the first time a Chief Minister had ever responded to their plight since their ancestral land was placed under a Forest Management Unit (FMU) in 1997.
The villagers have since been writing to successive state governments and chief ministers since 2013 pleading for the government to give back their native ancestral land.
However, they said that the FMU operator and now private company had adversely affected their traditional livelihoods by over-exploiting their jungles.
"They have not only taken away our ancestral land but over-exploited our jungles. They took away the logs, causing severe damage to our water catchments, our rivers and destroyed the wild animals' habitat," the villagers said.
They said the decision to earmark our ancestral land under the FMU in 1997 was done arbitrarily without any consultation with our people.
"It is not fair to us? Now after decades of exploitation of our home and resources, we want justice to be restored.
"Our hope is that a constructive consultation with all the affected parties be organised and a decision be made to return what is rightfully ours," they said.
The villagers hoped that the Sabah government would take steps to transition away from the current system of forest exploitation and return to a policy towards restoring the culture of the indigenous people.
"The indigenous lifestyle is about respect of nature and of sharing natural resources for the sustainable benefit of the family," they said, adding that the principles of Malaysia Madani should be truly implemented by the government of the day.
