I refer to the Malaysiakini report Lim ticks off Kg Buah Pala developer .

The media today quotes developer, Nusmetro Ventures, which is trying to develop the land on which Kampung Buah Pala sits, as saying that the people of Kampung Buah Pala are squatters.

I will give you some history and you readers judge whether they are squatters.

These people have been living on that land for over 150 years in exactly the same spot, from the time the owners - the British Brown family - were actively operating an estate on which all these people’s forefathers were workers.

Then when the last of the Browns decided to go back to Britain, they awarded the land to the workers of the estate and made the then Straits Settlements the trustee of the land over which sat Kampung Buah Pala.

By this act, they made the government of the day the trustee for the land. The trust owned the land. By and by, after the British left Malaysia, the Malaysian federal government took over from the Straits Settlements and became the trustee.

That remained so until somewhere along the way, someone in the state (this is not very clear to me yet) came along and made it into a Temporary Occupation License (TOL) land – meaning the owners of the land were made temporary occupiers of their own land by an act of treachery. This often happens to the poor and the weak.

Then surreptitiously, sometime in 2005, the Penang state government - which is not the owner of the land but a trustee of the federal government - sold the land to the Koperasi Pegawai-Pegawai Kerajaan Pulau Pinang – for a paltry sum of a little over RM3 million.

This ‘koperasi’ is very closed linked to the Umno bigwigs of the day. This ‘koperasi’ got into a joint venture agreement with Nusmetro, a property developer, who is now threatening the village with eviction and demolition.

In other words, the Penang state government’s bigwigs of the last administration, sold the land to themselves (from left pocket to right pocket) for a paltry sum.

Sold a land that was by the process of history owned by the villagers and held in trust by the federal government. They then now turn around and call the true owners (the poor cattle herders and residents) ‘squatters’.

I ask you now, are the residents of Kampong Buah Pala squatters or is the developer Nusmetro Ventures in the wrong?

If your readers want to find out more, please visit Kampung Buah Pala yourself and talk to the residents there . Or even talk to Lim Kit Siang, Lim Guan Eng, Karpal Singh and to any one of these people who now have the authority to see truth prevail and justice done.