Your land is
not safe in Malaysia
By
Chua Jui Meng
THOSE who think property is
the safest investment in Malaysia, perhaps it is time to think twice.
In Johor’s Pengerang where the RM60 billion Petronas Refinery and Petrochemical
Integrated Development (Rapid) mega project is located, the Barisan Nasional
(BN) government misuses, exploits and abuses the Land Acquisition Act 1960 to
seize land belonging to the rakyat
(people).
Johor Mentri Besar (Chief Minister) Ghani
Othman mercilessly takes your land, gives it to his cronies for private
property development, not public development projects.
In the process, he does not blink an
eyelid, wiping out village settlements, cemeteries, schools, clinics, community
halls and others in the way of his profiteering agenda.
The environment is also not spared
while public health and safety considerations take a back seat in the BN
government’s decision-making on mega-profit making mega projects.
This is how BN is rewarding its rakyat for keeping the same federal
government in power for 55 years.
Sarawak and Sabah are infamous for
land grabs. But, this has also been happening in Johor for decades – only, now
it is being carried out more blatantly and massively as greed mounts.
After 55 years of political power, the arrogant BN
government ignores the peoples’ protests like this Himpunan Hijau (Green Rally)
in Pengerang’s Sungai Rengit town on Sept 30, 2012.
Landowners in Malaysia are at risk all the time because when BN cronies eye
your land that is the end of your precious property.
Like Rapid, all well connected BN cronies in the corridors of power need
to do is to come up with a business proposal for an area and that’s it.
Below is an article by Thomas Fann who is also a leader of Himpunan Hijau
(Green Rally) and a Johorean who is well aware of what’s happening in
Pengerang. The article, posted by Free
Malaysia Today, gives an insight into the plight of the landowners and
villagers in Pengerang:
Land grab,
Malaysian-style
October 6, 2012
Land grab is non-discriminatory;
Malaysians from all racial, religious and social strata are affected.
COMMENT
By Thomas Fann
This is not a new issue, in fact it
is 21 years old.
It all began when the Barisan
Nasional government, with its overwhelming majority in Parliament, passed by 99
to 25 votes the 1991 Land Acquisition Amendment Bill, or Act A804. The
rephrasing of sections of the Land Acquisition Act 1960 basically gave
incontestable power to state governments to seize private land for development
by private companies and individuals. Lands originally acquired for public
purposes can also be used for private development.
Before Act A804, land could only be
acquired for public purposes or for public utilities like building of roads, schools,
hospitals, pipelines, water or power plants, etc. With the addition of “…for
any purpose which in the opinion of the State Authority is beneficial to the
economic development of Malaysia”, no land is safe.
The term “beneficial to the economic
development of Malaysia” is as subjective as you can get. A piece of land can
be acquired to build a posh five-star hotel, an amusement park or a golf resort
because in the opinion of the government it would bring in the tourist dollar
and create jobs for locals, not to mention enriching the private companies
which would, of course, be paying taxes.
To really make the Land Acquisition
Act water-tight for the acquirer, Section 68A says that acquisitions cannot be
invalidated by reason of any kind of subsequent disposal or use (etc) of the
acquired land.
This new provision aims at
preventing the acquirer or the purported purpose from being challenged in
court. You can only challenge the quantum of the compensation offered, the
measurement of the land area, the person whom compensation is payable to, and
the apportionment of the compensation.
The leader of the opposition then,
Lim Kit Siang, in opposing Act A804, gave this dire warning: “When it becomes
law, it will destroy the constitutional right to property enjoyed by Malaysians
for 34 years since Merdeka, and become the mother of all corruption, abuses of
power, conflicts-of-interest and unethical malpractices in Malaysia…”
Was Kit Siang just over-reacting or
scare-mongering when he said that or is it a prophecy that was and is being
fulfilled till today?
A new ball game
The impetus for the passing of Act
A804 was for the acquisition of 33,000 acres of land in the Gelang Patah area
for the construction of the second link with Singapore and the construction of
a new township by UEM, wiping out 19 villages and displacing 10,000 people.
The Johor state government offered
the affected smallholders compensation averaging RM26,000 per acre or 64 sen
per sqe ft, far below the then market value of RM100,000 per acre for
agricultural land.
In a subsequent civil suit by one of
the affected landowners against the government of Johor in 1995, it was
revealed that a subsidiary of Renong was offering the intended development for
sale at RM17 per sq ft, a whopping 28 times more than what the original
landowners got!
For a glimpse into some of the
backroom wheeling and dealing that went on with these deals, one should read
the court papers of cases like “Honan Plantations vs Govt of Johor’; and
“Stamford Holdings vs Govt of Johor”. Names of notable personalities like
Muhyiddin Yassin, Syed Mokhtar Albukhary and Yahya Talib in secret meetings
were mentioned.
For the Second Link and the highway
that linked it to the North-South Expressway to be built, the Land Acquisition
Act was necessary. To be fair, compensation had to not only take into account
the then prevailing market value but also the loss of livelihood for the people
who used to live off the land.
With Act A804, the government seized
a lot more land than was required for the custom and immigration complex and
the highway. We can safely say it seized almost 24,000 acres more for a private
corporation, UEM, albeit it is a GLC (government-linked corporation).
Today, UEM Land, as the master
developer of the 23,875-acre Nusajaya (as the acquired land is now called)
boasts of its enormous landbank and potential billions in profit from its
development. We want to ask this simple poignant question: whose lands were
these originally, and what about the 10,000 over affected villagers? Shouldn’t
these people be beneficiaries of development and not its victims? Perhaps some
of the villagers are now working in Legoland, who knows?
While some of the people behind the
scenes went on to achieve high office and some made it to the top 10
billionaires list, thousands of other nameless Malaysians are without land and
opportunities.
Land grab is non-discriminatory:
Malaysians from all racial, religious and social strata are affected.
Gelang Patah was just the precursor
to a new ball game called Land Grab and the same modus operandi was used for
Seremban 2, Bandar Aman Jaya in Sungai Petani, Pantai Kundor/Pantai Tanah Merah
and Paya Mengkuang in Melaka, Kerpan in Kedah, Sepang in Selangor, lands
acquired for the MRT project, Jalan Sultan, native customary lands in the
Peninsula, Sabah and Sarawak, and many, many more.
Of course, not all compulsory
acquisitions are unjust or not justifiable; but there should be a fair and
unskewed avenue for aggrieved landowners through the justice system to question
certain acquisitions.
The courts now are somewhat
constrained by Act A804, and in almost all cases such acquisitions are not
reversed.
The Pengerang grab
Twenty years on, the same script is
being acted out in Johor again (a BN stronghold), this time to the east in
Pengerang.
A total of 22,500 acres of land are
being acquired for the development of the Pengerang Integrated Petroleum
Complex (PIPC). The anchor project in this proposal is Petronas’ RAPID project
which requires a sizeable 6,424 acres.
Smallholders and plantations are
being offered between RM1.80 psf and RM8 psf for their land.
Can Pengerang be called Gelang Patah
2.0 where again, on the pretext of development, a huge tract of land is being
taken from their original landowners and placed in the hands of one or a few
wealthy individuals and corporations? Is the PIPC the main play or is property
speculation the main play?
Would the same prime minister who
mooted the Third Link to Singapore in 2009 make the announcement again after
all the land has been acquired? Who are the direct beneficiaries of such
development?
All these are so “legal” that one
government official after another is spewing out that it is done properly under
the terms of the Land Acquisition Act 1960. It may be legal, but is it moral?
Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak made
a statement during the launch of the sixth International Association of
Anti-Corruption Authorities Conference in Kuala Lumpur on the Oct 4, 2012: “Is
the unbridled and ruthless pursuit of extraordinary profits a form of
corruption? I believe that if we see corruption as fundamentally a moral problem,
therefore anything that promotes selfish interest at the expense of the
well-being of others is morally wrong. It was vapid [tasteless] self-interest
and greed that was truly at the heart of corruption. ”
Mr Prime Minister, I could not agree
with you more.
How much is enough for the greedy?
How many more poor and defenseless villagers must be forcibly displaced and
robbed of the fruits of development to satisfy the insatiable appetites of the
greedy who uses the Land Acquisition Act to enrich themselves? Who will speak
up for the thousands who will be landless and many without a means of
livelihood?
It is evil when a law is crafted to
take away land from the poor without their consent, fair compensation or share
in its benefits so that a few might make it to Forbes’ list of billionaires. We
should all be foaming at our mouth with anger at this injustice but instead we
just thank God daily that it is not our land they have come to take, at least
not yet.
Thomas Fann blogs at www.newmalaysia.org
