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 Zedtee Sdn Bhd, a subsidiary of a logging company called Shin Yang Group. According to Nang, a company official told him they needed some of their forest for timber. Sarawak wood is often imported into countries like the United States, Japan and South Korea where it is sold as furniture, flooring, and wood pellets that are burned for fuel.

Nang said he never reached an agreement with Zedtee regarding the forest or any potential relocation or payment. Instead, for nearly three years, his people have been at a standoff with authorities, as they resist the eviction levied without their consent or compensation.

That’s according to a new investigation published last week by Human Rights Watch that concludes the Rumah Jeffrey community is being wrongly evicted, in violation of Malaysia’s laws, as well as in violation of their international rights as Indigenous peoples to consent to extractive projects on their land. 

Various studies have shown that deforestation is a leading contributor to climate change, leading to less rainfall, more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and warmer temperatures. Research also indicates that protecting Indigenous land rights helps both save forests and protect biodiversity. But despite global pledges to stop deforestation, the problem continues to worsen. 

Luciana Téllez Chávez, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, said the Rumah Jeffrey’s experience reflects a broader problem of Indigenous rights being disregarded in the region. There are relatively few legal protections for Indigenous peoples in Sarawak compared with other state governments, but her investigation found that even the few legal protections, such as requirements for companies to get certified, are not being met. 

“There is a sense that a lot of the deforestation that happens in Sarawak is legal just because the law is so permissive of this type of activity,” she said. “What we’re trying to show is that even the modest protections that exist for Indigenous lands are not respected and this is one example of that.”

Indigenous peoples who want to stay on their land must prove their presence through a specific colonial-era aerial land survey, Chávez said. But the survey itself is classified. 

“That’s just absurd,” she said. “It’s just incredibly difficult for communities to advocate for their rights because all this critical environmental information is secret.” 

Chávez said Human Rights Watch worked with university researchers to access the survey data and prove that even by that arbitrary criterion, the Rumah Jeffrey have valid land claims.

Neither Zedtee nor the Shin Yang Group responded to messages seeking comment. The Sarawak Forest Department did not respond either to inquiries, but said in a letter to Human Rights Watch that it is committed to best practices in forest management. 

“The Sarawak Government remains committed to Sustainable Forest Management through its forest management certification policy and best forest management practices,” the agency said. “This commitment applies to both natural and planted forests, ensuring adherence to strict standards and best practices.”

Despite not receiving consent from the Rumah Jeffrey people, Zedtee proceeded with removing trees from the forest, Human Rights Watch found. A study by researchers at the University of Maryland and the organization Global Forest Watch estimated that the subsequent logging removed nearly eight hectares of forest, or the size of nearly 20 American football fields.

Nicholas Mujah is the general secretary of the Sarawak Dayak Iban Association, a community group representing Indigenous Iban communities like the Rumah Jeffrey in Sarawak. Mujah said there are hundreds of court cases dealing with land disputes in Sarawak because evictions to make way for deforestation are growing more common. 

“This type of modus operandi is very, very rampant in Sarawak,” he said. 

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So far, the Rumah Jeffrey community is resisting eviction. The village of about 60 people relies on the forest and nearby river for fishing, hunting, gathering, and growing food. Moving away would force them to leave two cemeteries where their ancestors and loved ones are buried, as well as a waterfall that they consider sacred. 

“The land is very, very significant to the livelihood of the Iban people in Sarawak,” said Mujah.

Human Rights Watch investigators found that the Rumah Jeffrey people did not have an opportunity to provide input in the eviction process, nor do they have an avenue to overturn it.

Mujah hopes the international community helps provide some hope. At the end of this year, the European Union is putting into effect new regulations that will allow companies to be fined for deforestation on their product supply lines that occurred after 2020, whether or not it was technically legal. The law, Chávez says, is a “game-changer,” and could put pressure on the state of Sarawak and the Malaysian government more broadly to better respect Indigenous rights in order to protect a lucrative export industry.

Ideally, Chávez wants the Sarawak government to revoke its eviction notice. Human Rights Watch also called upon countries like the U.S. and Japan to enforce existing laws against importing wood that was felled through illegal deforestation or human rights violations. Finally, Chávez hopes Sarawak adopts stricter legal standards to protect communities like the Rumah Jeffrey.

“The Sarawak legal system is incredibly discriminatory against Indigenous peoples,” she said.”The local laws are not on par with the international standards with the rights of Indigenous peoples and they truly facilitate the appropriation of Indigenous land.”