A SARAWAK social activist wants the state government and the Council for Native Customs and Tradition to investigate the 2018 awarding of native status to Governor Abdul Taib Mahmud’s wife, Ragad Kurdi Taib.

Peter John Jaban claimed that Ragad, an Arab, had not only “jumped the queue” in the application process but was also given “preferential treatment throughout”.

“Applications for native status come with very strict requirements, including knowledge of the culture and the language and longstanding connection to a community,” he said in a statement today.

He said that knowledge would be verified through interviews and tests, which could take up to 20 years to process.

The deputy president of the Global Human Rights Federation and information chief for Sarawak Associations for Peoples Aspirations said even with the native status, ownership of native land is limited to citizens whose parents are both native.

Ragad was in the news recently when a stepson – Taib’s son from his first marriage – went to court allegedly to stop a transfer of his late mother’s property to her (Ragad).

Jaban said even Sarawak people born out of a mixed race, where one parent is a native, are denied the ability to inherit their ancestral lands under the Sarawak Interpretation Ordinance 2005.

The law requires only children whose parents are both native qualify to own native lands.

“This is an issue that has been widely debated over the last few years. If Ragad and her children are allowed to inherit native lands, this would make a mockery of the rule of law and the rights of all Malaysians,” Jaban said.

He said he knew many people had fallen foul of this, citing a farmer who had one parent a native Iban who he claimed he leased the Lundu land he had inherited from his father because he does not qualify to inherit it.

“Champions of the culture, born and raised in Sarawak, have been forced to undergo rigorous and time-consuming interviews to ‘prove’ their entitlement while their native parents stand by helplessly.

“Children born outside of Malaysia to Malaysian mothers have only just been allowed citizenship. No wonder the people of Sarawak are enraged at this particular case of a Syrian-born woman, with her children born overseas to two non-Malaysian parents, should just waltz in and claim Sarawak assets as her own,” Jaban said. – June 20, 2023.