Giving Orang Asli land

thank you for halleliah

By parcelling out land to the Orang Asli under the new land policy and then barring them statutorily from making further claims in court, the government could end up avoiding compensating the Orang Asli for land used for development. If the Orang Asli statistics are correct, the government could evade recognising and paying compensation for potentially 200,000 acres belonging to Orang Asli under common law which is excluded from this new land scheme.
By Ding Jo-Ann, The Nut Graph
"TANAH kami, maruah kami," said banners at an Orang Asli protest in Putrajaya recently against changes to the policy affecting their land rights.
Just three months ago, Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin announced that Orang Asli household heads would be given two to six acres of land to help "take the community out of poverty". An additional 5,000 square feet would be granted to build houses. The policy would reportedly benefit 19,990 Orang Asli households in peninsular Malaysia and involve an approximate total of 120,000 acres of land.
But as the idiom goes, "Beware the Greeks bearing gifts." Or in this case, it may be wise for the Orang Asli to be wary of overtures from a government with a proven track record of taking land away from them, rather than awarding it.
What's the catch?
Orang Asli say if they accept the land under the new policy, it would deprive them of a further 200,000 acres of customary land which they currently occupy.
In addition to that, further conditions seem to be attached to this "gifting" of land:
The land cannot be rented out, leased or pawned without the permission of the state.
Ownership of the land cannot be transferred until the first owner has held it for at least 15 years.
Orang Asli who accept the land grant cannot claim for any other land in that area or any other Orang Asli area. They also cannot make any claims for any "roaming area".
The land would be developed with crops such as oil palm and rubber and these plantations would be managed by developers.
Orang Asli would have to pay for costs incurred on their land such as surveying costs, premiums, registration and "other payments advanced by developers" out of the proceeds from the land.
Existing land gazetted as Orang Asli reserves can be re-gazetted and parcelled out under this new policy.
Yogeswaran Subramaniam, currently pursuing a doctoral thesis on Orang Asli land rights, estimates that the land grants would only yield about RM400 a month for each household. He also says that Orang Asli culture and identity is "inextricably linked" to their land and a top-down policy compelling them to turn their land into plantations could be "devastating and traumatic" to them.
Customary land
(Corrected.) Furthermore, the government might actually be "giving" the Orang Asli land and attaching ownership conditions on what already belongs to them under common law, as established in the 2002 Sagong bin Tasi v Selangor State Government case.