A new Human Rights Watch report alleges abuse and human rights violations in an Indigenous community in Malaysia’s Sarawak state. The report finds Malaysian timber company Zedtee Sdn Bhd (Zedtee) destroyed culturally valuable forests without the consent of Indigenous people, who are facing an eviction notice from their land.
The HRW report says the Sarawak government allowed Zedtee, part of timber giant Shin Yang Group, to establish a timber plantation in a part of the Sarawak rainforest that overlaps with the 60-member Rumah Jeffery group, an Indigenous Iban community.
Ruma Jeffery members have foraged from the forests and fished from the rivers of the area for generations. They also maintain their ancestral burial grounds there.
“Rumah Jeffery meets all the requirements under the Sarawak Land Code for the government to legally recognize their customary rights over their ancestral land,” the Sarawak Dayak Iban Association (SADIA), an Indigenous rights organization, told HRW.
Yet, according to the HRW report, the government failed to protect the Indigenous community, and despite the lack of free, prior and informed consent, Zedtee started logging the forest in 2022. Citing data from the Global Land Analysis and Discovery laboratory at the University of Maryland, HRW said the logging operations in 2022 resulted in deforestation of nearly 8 hectares (20 acres) of forest.
HRW says wood coming from Sarawak, where timber exports were worth 2.3 billion Malaysian ringgit ($532 million) in 2023, is “tainted” by human rights abuses and deforestation.
Residents protested but the Sarawak Forest Department reportedly threatened to arrest the protesters, according to the report. Zedtee then filed a case accusing Rumah Jeffery of encroaching on its land lease. Later, the Sarawak Forest Department issued an eviction order against the community.
In an email to Mongabay, the Sarawak Forest Department said the eviction notice was a “regulatory enforcement procedure and not a forced eviction.”
It also said that this part of the forest is designated “with the aim of managing the area for sustainable production” and that Shin Yang and Zedtee both have legal license to work there. It said that in 2017, Rumah Jeffery “relocated and constructed a longhouse within” the forest in question “without obtaining approval from the Forest Department.”
The department said the Indigenous community needs to follow procedures to claim the forest. Land is a “sensitive matter” in Sarawak because of conflicting land claims, the department said. “Without legal documents of NCR [Native customary rights], it is challenging to obtain consent.”
However, HRW report author Luciana Téllez-Chávez said getting those legal documents is prohibitively challenging. “The current system poses nearly insurmountable obstacles for registration and then wields these administrative barriers to dispossess communities and give their land in concession to companies. It is a perverse system.”
Mongabay reached out to Zedtee and Shin Yang to respond to the report but did not receive a reply.
Banner image of an Iban woman in Sarawak, Malaysia, courtesy of Luciana Téllez-Chávez/Human Rights Watch.
