A GROUP of Orang Asli from the Bateq Mayah tribe have filed a suit against their forced conversion to Islam 30 years ago, Malaysiakini reports.

The news portal reported 137 Orang Asli from the tribe are claiming they had been wrongfully and illegally converted at their home at Kampung Benchah Kelubi, Merapoh, Kuala Lipis, Pahang, in April 1993.

The matter will be heard for case management on April 17 on the group’s bid to transfer the civil action to the High Court in Kuantan.

Court documents revealed 57 of them were first converted during the incident and the rest are children who were born later and automatically became Muslims.

In a civil suit filed at the Kuala Lumpur High Court on September 28 last year, the group has named six defendants – the Orang Asli Development Department (Jakoa), its director and officer, the Pahang Islamic Religious and Malay Customs Council (Muip), the state government, and the federal government.

In their affidavits, the plaintiffs claimed that in early 1993, two village leaders were asked by a Jakoa representative to convert to Islam, and to get others in the village to do so too.

The two leaders were allegedly threatened to convert, failing which, the whole group would be removed from their village, their houses and crops would be destroyed, and the villagers would be chased down and tortured if they ran to the mountains.

The plaintiffs claimed the villagers were not informed of the legal implications of embracing Islam – that they would be subject to Pahang’s Islamic legal framework and that children born to them would automatically be Muslims too.

They claimed that later, the same Jakoa officer came again to the village with a few Muip officers, and the officers gathered the villagers in an open area and converted them.

The group wants the court to declare they do not profess the religion of Islam; that any person born to the plaintiffs after the filing of this suit is not a person professing the religion of Islam; and that the plaintiffs have the right to practise and profess their own spiritual and cultural beliefs without any interference from the defendants.

They also seek general damages to be assessed by the court as well as exemplary and/or aggravated damages, 5% interest on the awarded judgment sum, costs and any other relief deemed fit by the court.

Five of the defendants have since filed applications to strike out the lawsuit over several grounds, among them that the civil action was filed 29 years after the alleged mass conversion, hence filed out of time as per section 2 of the Public Authorities Protection Act 1948 and section 6 of the Limitations Act 1953.

Muip – another defendant – has filed an application to dispute the jurisdiction of the civil court to hear the case because the issues raised in the civil action comes under the jurisdiction of the Pahang Shariah Court. – March 27, 2023.