Indigenous peoples of Sabah Since its establishment, the SUHAKAM Sabah Office has engaged in work relating to the indigenous peoples’ collective rights to land and resources, especially their claims to native customary land as provided for under Section 15 of the Sabah Land Ordinance No. 10 of 1930. In 2018, SUHAKAM received 56 complaints regarding claims involving native customary rights (NCR). These complaints related to alleged encroachment or dispossession of land claimed as NCR land; the inclusion of land, claimed to be NCR land, in gazetted forests or park reserves; overlapping claims; slow processing of land applications, requests for the issuance of native titles and gazetting of land as community reserve. Below are two cases involving NCR land claims by the natives of Sabah. District of Pitas - The Shrimp Aquaculture Project near Sungai Telaga The Shrimp Aquaculture Project is an Entry Point Project 6 under the Malaysian Economic Transformation Programme which was undertaken in the 10th Malaysia Plan. The project seeks to enhance the quality of Malaysian shrimp exports by establishing an Integrated Zone for Aquaculture Models. By siting the project in the District of Pitas, in particular near Sungai Telaga, the government hopes to alleviate the extreme poverty in the district by way of providing job opportunities for the locals. The project is targeting the development of 10,000 hectares of land, that includes a large portion of mangrove swamps, to be fully developed by 2020. This project is undertaken by the Yayasan Sabah Group and Sunlight Inno Seafood Sdn. Bhd. Unlawful clearing during the earlier stages of the project disrupted the ecosystem in the mangroves. The mangroves are home to the proboscis monkey (Nasalis larvatus), pig-tailed macaque (Macaca nemestrina), long-tailed macaque (M. fascicularis), Borneo bay cat (Catopuma badia), flying foxes (Pteropus vampyrus), otters, Brahminy kite (Haliastur indus), oriental darter (Anhinga melanogaster), adjutant stork (Leptoptilos javanicus), estuarine crocodile (Crocodylus porosus), and mangrove squirrel, etc. Some of the species mentioned above are in the protected and/or vulnerable species under the Wildlife Enactment and CITES lists. 92 SUHAKAM ANNUAL REPORT 2018