Foreign Migrants Trespassing in Sabah Forest Reserves: A Legal Discourse
[101] Sriwijaya Law Review Vol. 5 Issue 1, January (2021)
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Foreign Migrants Trespassing in Sabah Forest Reserves:
A Legal Discourse
Rohani Abdul Rahim,
a*
Muhamamd Afiq Ahmad Tajuddin,
a
Rovina Intung,
a
Azizah Landa,
a
and Herlina Makanah
a
a*
Former Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Malaysia. E-mail: drro-
hani60@gmail.com
Article Abstract
Keywords:
Forest Reserve, Foreign
Migrants; Illegal
trespassing.
Article History
Received: Oct 29, 2020;
Reviewed: Jan 23, 2021;
Accepted: Jan 30, 2021;
Published: Jan 31, 2021.
DOI:
10.28946/slrev.Vol5.Iss1.
977.pp101-115
According to Sabah Forestry Enactment 1968, Yang di-Pertua Negeri
Sabah is given the power to reserves forests for various purposes including
commercial, protection, domestic and others. Sabah Forestry Department
is entrusted with proper and efficient planning, and implementation of
State forest resources management (SFM) to comply with the sustainable
forest principles. It achieves to manage forest resources towards
sustainable and profitable forest governance. However, Sabah forest
reserves were threatened by illegal trespassing by foreign migrants to
possess forest produce unlawfully and to occupy State land illegally. This
article aims to expose the causes of the invasion of forest reserves by
foreign migrants, the offences committed by foreign migrant activities in
the forest reserves, violation of specific legislation such as the Immigration
Act 1959/63 and the Forest Enactment 1968. The qualitative legal research
methodology was used to understand the issues at hand, the existing
applicable laws and the legal implications for such illegal activities in
these forest reserves. Secondary data found in the legislation, journals,
annual report, and law publication were collected, reviewed, analysed, and
discussed to understand its legal implications better. Thus, efforts to
expose these illegal activities by foreign migrants is essential to ensure
Sabah Forest Reserves can continuously be maintained and not destroyed
at the hand of illegal foreign trespassers. Employers should also be made
responsible for their involvement in trafficked or smuggled illegal
migrants as workers and simultaneously, conduct illegal activities to deceit
the State Forestry efforts and developmental planning in Sabah.
©2021; This is an Open Access Research distributed under the term of the Creative Commons Attribution Li-
cense (https://Creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and repro-
duction in any medium, provided the original works are appropriately cited.
INTRODUCTION
Sabah State Government gazetted 3.61 million hectares of Sabah Forest as a forest reserve and
classified them into seven class type as determined in Table 2. These forest reserves are gazette
ISSN Print: 2541-5298
ISSN Online: 2541-6464
101-114