Baru Bian

On the court record

The firm's record concerns the proof of native customary rights in Sarawak and the pivotal question whether the State's alienation of land extinguishes such rights and bars rectification of the title, a matter of significance to indigenous communities in East Malaysia.

Baru Bian appears in the corpus as counsel in native customary rights litigation in Sarawak, argued before the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan), a specialised field concerning the land rights of indigenous communities.

The firm's reported work centres on a connected group of appeals in which it appeared, at different stages and for different parties, in a dispute between an indigenous claimant, suing on behalf of himself and his siblings, and the Superintendent of Land and Survey for the Limbang Division, the State Government of Sarawak and the Land Custody and Development Authority. The central questions were whether native customary rights (NCR) over the land had been proven by the claimant, whether the map tendered by the claimant should be given weight as evidence of the extent of those rights, whether the reasons given by the High Court were inadequate so as to warrant appellate interference, and, critically, whether the alienation of the land by the State extinguished the native customary rights and barred the rectification of the title.

These are questions at the heart of the law governing indigenous land in Sarawak, where the recognition of native customary rights depends on proof of long occupation and customary practice, and where the tension between such rights and the State's power to alienate land for development frequently falls to be resolved. The firm acted both for the appellant claimant, challenging the sufficiency of the findings below, and for the respondents in the connected appeals, so that its submissions engaged both the evidential proof of native customary rights and the legal consequences of a subsequent alienation of the land. The firm's record is a focused native-customary-rights practice, in a field of considerable importance to indigenous communities and to the development of land law in East Malaysia. The recurring issues, the weight to be given to a community's own map of its territory, the sufficiency of the reasons a trial court must give before an appellate court will interfere, and the effect of a state alienation on rights said to predate it, are the very questions on which the recognition and survival of native title in Sarawak most often turn, and the firm's appearance on both sides of the connected appeals reflects a deep engagement with this contested area of law.