UNFAZED by the dismantling of their blockade yet again by the authorities, the Orang Asli Temiar tribesmen in Gua Musang, Kelantan have rebuilt the roadblocks to protect their customary land rights which they said had state had failed to do.

Mustafa Along, a spokesman for the group, said a barricade would be set up in Cawas despite it having been torn down three times now.

“Tonight we will resume our blockade and we also plan to raise additional obstacles. Their locations will be determined at our committee meeting tonight,” he told The Malaysian Insight.

Mustafa said the natives intended to block the entry of timber and agricultural company workers into the land near their village. The blockades, he said, would stop when the Kelantan government stopped logging and farming activities on their land. 

“We will stop the blockade if the Kelantan government stops logging activities. It’s had enough, there’s no need to cut down any more trees,” he said.

On Monday, the authorities demolished the blockade that the Orang Asli had maintained for seven months to keep loggers and planters off the disputed land in the Ulu Kelantan forest.

About 200 officers from the Kelantan Forestry Department and the Gua Musang Land Office had descended on the barriers put up in Cawas, Kaleg, and Kegeg.

“As long as the government does not stop logging, we will continue to resist,” Mustafa said today.

Another Orang Asal activist, Nur Mohd Syafiq Dendi Abdullah, travelled to Gua Musang town to lodge a police report over Musang King farm workers entering the area the natives considered their land.

“In the morning, the farm workers entered the farm with the State Forestry Department, they are again on our land and I lodged a police report today,” he told The Malaysian Insight. – August 29, 2018.