KUALA LUMPUR: A group of 137 Orang Asli from the Bateq Mayah tribe are seeking to nullify their Islamic status fater claiming they were duped into converting during a mass conversion 30 years ago.
The aboriginal people living in Kampung Benchah Kelubi - also known as Kampung Batu Jalang or Kampung Tom Ki Ying in Merapoh, Kuala Lipis, Pahang
They group claimed the conversion happened sometime in April 1993 when 57 of the plaintiffs were yet to be born. The 57 are descendants of the other 56 plaintiffs or other persons who lived in the village at the time of the Incident.
They have named one Bakar Unus, the Orang Asli Development Department (Jakoa), Pahang Islamic Religious Council, Pahang state government and federal Government as defendants.
In their statement of claim, lawyers representing the group said the defendants had exploited their influence over the aboriginal peoples in the village and used duress to convert them into Islam.
The suit was filed through the law firm of Messrs Fahri, Azzat and Co.
The Orang Asli claimed the defendants had breached their duty to protect and preserving the cultural and religious beliefs of the aboriginal peoples.
According to the, the conversion happened after a Jakoa representative visited the village and asked two of the then leaders of the tribe (both now deceased) to attend a course in Kuantan.
In Kuantan, the duo were asked to convert into Islam and to get the other villagers to do the same.
The two leaders subsequently conveyed this to the other villagers, who refused to convert into Islam.
However, sometime after April 1993, the Jakoa representative returned to the village and threatened the villagers for refusing to convert.
He warned them that they would not be allowed to live in the village anymore and their houses and crops would be destroyed.
The Orang Asli were also warned that they would be hunted down and tortured if they ran deeper into the jungle.
"In this way, the villagers were coerced, forced and threatened into converting.
"They were fearful of their lives as they had nowhere else to live," the statement of claim read.
It was also stated in the statement that the Bateq Mayah aboriginal people are naturally fearful towards outsiders, especially people in authority.
Later, the villagers were all told to gather in an open area and asked to utter the "Kalimah Syahadah" (proclamation of faith).
Over the course of the next few years, the villagers received new identity cards with the word "Islam" stated on it.
The villagers were also given Muslim names which they were not aware of or had agreed to, the statement of claim read.
It was also stated that until now none of the plaintiffs profess or practice the religion of Islam as even after the incident, they continued professing and practising the cultural and religious beliefs of the Bateq Mayah aboriginal group which can be described as animism.
The plaintiffs also claimed that they were also instructed to vote for candidates from Barisan Nasional (BN) whenever elections were held.
However, it was only around 2000, when more of the villagers learnt how to speak basic Malay that they realised their identity cards had the word "Islam" and their names were changed to mean they were Muslims.
They subsequently approached the Malaysian Human Rights Commission (Suhakam) in 2004 and the commission prepared a report on the incident in April 2013, titled "Report of the National Inquiry into the Land Rights of Indigenous Peoples".
However, the issue of the mass conversion was not highlighted in the report.
One of the plaintiff eventually sought legal assistance and approached lawyer and activist Siti Kasim for assistance.
However, they were still fearful of taking legal action at that time.
It was only after one of the plaintiff could not marry other aboriginal people from other villagers unless they converted to Islam did the group decided to bring their claim to court.
They are fighting for the right to self-determination, including the right to freely determine their cultural development and maintain their cultural institutions.
They are seeking for the courts to declare the mass conversion as illegal and therefore null and void as the villagers did not utter the "Kalimah Syahadah" in reasonably intelligible Arabic.
They are claiming that they were not aware of the meaning of the "Kalimah Syahadah" as they were all illiterate at that material time.
Alternatively, they claim that even if the villagers did utter the "Kalimah Syahadah", it was not out of their own free will as they were coerced to take part in the mass conversion.
The villagers only agreed to do so under threat of violence to their lives and destruction of their property, the statement read.
They are also seeking for general and exemplery damages.