The 137 plaintiffs, through the law firm Fahri Azzat & Co, had filed the writ of summons at the Kuala Lumpur High Court on Sept 28 last year. The civil action named six defendants, namely the Orang Asli Development Department (Jakoa), its director and officer, the Pahang Islamic Religious and Malay Customs Council (Muip), the state government, and the federal government.

According to the statement of claim sighted by Malaysiakini, they alleged that the wrongful and illegal conversion was carried out at their home at Kampung Benchah Kelubi, Merapoh, Kuala Lipis, Pahang, in April 1993.    The cause papers claimed that 57 of the plaintiffs were converted during the incident and that the remainder of the plaintiffs are children who were born later and also have the word Islam on their identity cards due to their descendency.

The plaintiffs claimed that in early 1993, two village leaders were asked by a Jakoa representative to not only convert to Islam but also get the other villagers to do so. They alleged that when the villagers refused to do so, an officer from the department visited the village and issued several threats to ensure their conversion.

Among these threats are that the villagers would not be allowed to live in the village anymore, their houses and crops would be destroyed, and the villagers would be chased down and tortured if they ran to the mountains.   The plaintiffs claimed that the villagers were not informed of the legal implications of embracing Islam, namely that they would be subject to Pahang’s Islamic legal framework and that children born to them would automatically be Muslims too.

They alleged that later, the same Jakoa officer came again to the village with a few Muip officers, whereby these officers gathered the villagers in an open area and asked them to recite the kalimah syahadah. The plaintiffs claimed the villagers attempted to parrot the Islamic recitation by the Jakoa officer and did not repeat what was said, adding that the villagers did not even understand what kalimah syahadah meant and how their lives would change after converting to Islam.

[The kalimah syahadah - one of the Five Pillars of Islam - is an Islamic oath that reads “I bear witness that there is no deity but God (Allah), and I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of God.”] They claimed that the officers took down the names of all the villagers and then left.

However, the plaintiffs claimed that they profess or practise Islam following the alleged mass conversion and continued to profess and practise the cultural and religious beliefs of the Bateq Mayah. They alleged that after 2000 when more of the villagers learnt how to speak basic Bahasa Malaysia, they then realised that the word “Islam” was stated on their identity cards.

Practice animism   

The plaintiffs contended that the Bateq Mayah, who practice animism, is a vulnerable group dependent on the defendants to protect their way of life from modernisation and exploitation per the Aboriginal People’s Act 1954. “In 1993, the defendants wrongfully exploited their influence over the aboriginal peoples in the village and, in breach of their duties to them, wrongfully, illegally and used duress to convert them to Islam.

“In doing so, they breached their duty to protect and preserve the cultural and religious beliefs of those peoples,” the plaintiffs contended. They claimed that around 2004, they approached the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (Suhakam) for help, which then prepared a 2013 report titled “Report of the National Inquiry into the Land Rights of Indigenous Peoples”. However, they claimed the mass conversion issue was not highlighted in the report.

The plaintiffs claimed that the mass conversion was illegal and violated sections 101 of the Administration of Islamic Law Enactment (Pahang) 1991 as the villagers did not utter the kalimah syahadah in reasonably intelligible Arabic, were not aware of the phrase’s meaning due to illiteracy, and was not done out of the free will.

They are seeking several court declarations, among them that the plaintiffs are not persons professing the religion of Islam; that any person born to the plaintiffs after the filing of this suit is not a person professing the religion of Islam; and that the plaintiffs have the right to practise and profess their own spiritual and cultural beliefs without any interference from the defendants.

They also seek general damages to be assessed by the court as well as exemplary and/or aggravated damages, five percent interest on the awarded judgment sum, costs and any other relief deemed fit by the court. Five of the defendants have since filed applications to strike out the lawsuit over several grounds, among them that the civil action was filed 29 years after the alleged mass conversion, and thus filed out of time per Section 2 of the Public Authorities Protection Act 1948 and Section 6 of the Limitations Act 1953.

The other defendant Muip has filed an application to dispute the jurisdiction of the civil court to hear the case because the issues raised in the civil action comes under the jurisdiction of the Pahang Syariah Court. The High Court in Kuala Lumpur has set April 17 for case management of the plaintiffs’ bid to transfer the civil action to the High Court in Kuantan.

The Attorney-General’s Chambers is acting for the federal government as well as Jakoa and its director and officer. Pahang’s legal adviser is representing the state government.