The Iban community of Rumah Nor, of Sekabai, Sebauh, Bintulu, in Sarawak, Malaysia, has erected a new blockade to defend their native customary lands from new threats.

A new township highway is threatening to take over a significant section of their remaining native customary lands, without any prior informed consent by the community.

In addition, a new logging concession has been issued to take the away the last of the community's primary forests as well as mature secondary forests from their fallowed rice fields, which are planted in fruit trees and native trees that provide habitat for wild boar and other game.

The community is highly dependent on their lands for rice farming, orchards, gardens, hunting, fishing, and wild herbs.

The sixty-four families of the Rumah Nor longhouse have united again to blockade these further encroachments and document them with photos, video, and letters of protest. They have also begun the process to file two new court cases against the companies and government authorities illegally grabbing their lands.

In 2001, the community won a precedent-setting court case that recognized their rights to their entire ancestral territory, including an area leased to a pulp plantation company.

A 2005 appellate court decision returned the disputed area to the company, but agreed that all the remaining ancestral territory was the native customary rights land of Rumah Nor. As such, it can not be alienated from them without due process, which has never been followed.

While new encroachments are met with blockades, the community continues to wait for resolution of their first case, due to be heard in Federal Court.

To learn more, watch the Borneo Project's 27-minute online documentary film on Rumah Nor struggles.

-Blockade news and photo courtesy of the Sarawak Dayak Iban Association