BELAGA: Indigenous communities in Sarawak’s remote central region have launched legal proceedings against a major logging and oil palm corporation, claiming unlawful forest destruction has triggered catastrophic flooding in their ancestral lands.
Residents from longhouses along Ulu Sungai Belaga have initiated both an injunction and civil lawsuit at the Bintulu High Court, alleging their native customary rights forests were cleared without proper authorization, leaving their communities vulnerable to environmental disaster.
The legal challenge was filed through Senator Abun Sui Anyit, who represents the affected villagers. The court documents seek to immediately suspend the company’s ongoing operations in the district.
“These communities have turned to the judicial system as their last resort for justice,“ explained Abun, who also serves as information chief for Sarawak PKR.
“Their ancestral forests have been appropriated illegally for commercial logging purposes.”
The lawyer emphasised that the subsequent environmental devastation from logging and plantation activities has directly contributed to severe flooding affecting the indigenous settlements.
Bintulu, where the court case was filed, lies approximately 200 kilometers from Belaga district.
During the second week of last month, relentless torrential rainfall triggered massive flooding across Belaga district. However, the impact was markedly worse in areas where forests had been removed for commercial purposes.
“The flood emergency in Belaga reached critical levels,“ Abun reported when the disaster struck. “Longhouses and riverside communities situated in zones that had undergone clearance for logging and oil palm cultivation experienced the most devastating impacts.”
The correlation between deforestation and flood severity was stark, with settlements in cleared areas bearing the brunt of the disaster.
The intensity and rapid onset of the flooding have prompted calls for an immediate moratorium on large-scale forest clearance and land leveling for commercial agriculture and logging.
“The sudden nature and severity of this flooding demonstrates that extensive tree removal and earth-moving operations must cease immediately,“ Abun stated.
The flooding submerged numerous settlements under approximately two meters of water. Critical infrastructure, including rural roads and bridges, disappeared beneath surging floodwaters, isolating communities and hampering relief efforts.
Belaga district is home to roughly 50,000 residents and occupies a vast territory along the Sarawak-Kalimantan frontier in Borneo’s interior. The district’s land area is comparable in size to Pahang state, making it one of the largest administrative divisions in Sarawak.
The remote location, combined with the district’s position in the heart of Borneo Island, makes these communities particularly dependent on their surrounding forests for traditional livelihoods and environmental protection.
The lawsuit centers on allegations that the logging corporation violated native customary rights (NCR) laws, which are meant to protect indigenous land tenure systems in Sarawak. NCR forests represent ancestral territories where local communities have historically practiced traditional land use.
The legal challenge represents a growing trend of indigenous communities in Malaysian Borneo using the courts to defend their territorial rights and environmental security against commercial development projects that they claim proceed without proper consent or adequate environmental safeguards.
The case is now before the Bintulu High Court, where the indigenous communities seek both injunctive relief to halt ongoing operations and civil remedies for the alleged damages their settlements have suffered.