DAP whip in the Sabah State Assembly, Dr. Edwin Bosi will move a motion in Sabah Stafe Assembly next month to propose a Sabah State Assembly Select Committee headed by Speaker Salleh Keruak to hold public inquiry to review 52 years of Sabah in Malaysia.
This will provide all Sabahans an opportunity to ventilate and articulate their hopes, expectations ad dream of Sabah in Malaysia, and an important aspect of such a review must be the three fundamental guarantees engraved in the Keningau Batu Sumpah – freedom of religion, land rights and adat istiadat of native Sabahans.
Edwin’s motion will be follow-up to the recent suggestion by Salleh that he Federal Government gove partial autonomy to Sabah and Sarawak, as both states lacked independence in decision-making, and make both feel they are partners in Malaysia and not servants of West Malaysian colonialists.
I am amazed by the very co-operative and friendly attitude of the people in Kg Iban, without any sense of bitterness but prepared to work with the authorities, although five years ago they suffered a great injustice when 1,800 acres of land in Landau which the 300 people in the kampong had worked since their forefathers in the British colonial period, were seized back by the State Government without any compensation whatsoever.
This is a violation of one of the three guarantees in the Batu Sumpah and such a deprivation of the land rights of the people in Kg Iban would not have taken place if the state government had respected both the letter and spirit of Batu Sumpah.
The people of Kampong Iban are model citizens of Sabah and Malaysia, who harbour no grievances despite the injustices visited on them five years ago.
I will write to the Sabah Chief Minister, Tan Sri Musa Aman to appeal to him to consider the appeal of the 300 people in Kampung Iban for restitution of the land which had been seized from them five years ago, and I hope that the Chief Minister would use his good office to ensure that the people in Kampong Iban would be restored their land together with the proper titles in accordance with Batu Sumpah.
(Speech at the launching of the fourth Batu Sumpah replica at Kampung iban, Marotai on Friday, 6th Mach 2015k at 8 pm)