On October 20, 2022, Jeffery Nang, chief of the Rumah Jeffrey people in Malaysia, went to a community meeting and was handed a letter by a government official in Sarawak, a state on the island of Borneo in Malaysia. The letter was an eviction notice for Nang and the 60-some members of Rumah Jeffrey, who are members of the broader Indigenous Iban people of Borneo.
Leave their forest within 30 days, the official notice said, or risk charges against anyone who remained.
The letter was dated six days earlier. The clock had already started ticking.
The notice contended the Rumah Jeffrey people were violating the law by living within a “protected forest.” They had less than a month to demolish all their crops, tear down their longhouse and remove all of their belongings, and get out.
But although the eviction notice cited the land as a “protected” area, Nang knew there was more to the story. Five months earlier, Nang had received a visit from an official from a company called... Read more
