Natives torch Tabung Haji tractors

Police failure to act on their complaints allegedly led native landowners to torch the Tabung Haji-owned vehicles.

KUCHING: Frustrated Iban landowners allegedly torched 16 tractors worth several million ringgits belonging to Tabung Haji early this morning after police failed to look into their complaints of encroachment.

More than 300 landowners from about 20 longhouses were allegedly present during the incident which took place in an area between Kampung Temiang and Kampung Keniong along the Simunjan-Punda road.

So far, five persons have been arrested although the majority of the 300 landowners who were allegedly present during the incident had offered themselves for arrest in a bid to show their solidarity.

A spokesman for the landowners said they had warned Tabung Haji and its workers not to encroach into their land and destroy their farms and fruit trees.

The landowners had also lodged several police reports against Tabung Haji, but the police failed to respond.

Two weeks ago, the landowners took their case to the Human Rights Commission Malaysia (Suhakam) in a public hearing in Serian.

Was it sabotage?

Meanwhile, lawyer for the landowners, Dominique Ng, when contacted, said the torching could have been the work of Tabung Haji workers who had put the blame on the landowners.

He said he was informed that 16 excavators or tractors were burnt.

Ng said the landowners had accused Tabung Haji of relentless and illegal encroachments into their native customary rights (NCR) land despite many protests by the natives.

He added that landowners complained that Tabung Haji had destroyed their farms and fruit trees.

Ng, the former Padungan assemblyman, said the area was in the same location as Rimunan Hijau which had settled its dispute with the landowners in court.

Ng had also been landowners’ lawyer.

Meanwhile, the Simunjan police were not available for comment.