Session 8: Execution of Court Orders and Judgment

1. Session 8: Execution of Court Orders and Judgment Presented By: The Rt. Hon. YAA Tan Sri Richard Malanjum Chief Judge of Sabah & Sarawak

2. Statistics of environmental cases in Malaysia Year 2009 Year 2010 Year 2011 Year 2012

3. Challenges inensuring a judgment or order is executed • Constraints on the courts • Highest sentence – 6 months • Highest fines- RM250,000.00 • The legislations providing for lenient penalties • Absence of restitutions against offenders • Large corporations merely asked junior officers to appear for them thus the responsible officers escaped

4. Challenges inensuring a judgment or order is executed • In civil cases more often than not damage irreversible by the time actions are heard • Forest destroyed • Dams completed and impounded • Underhand tactics by big corporations • Use of thugs

5. Pending legal action

6. Unsafe water from the source due to deforestation

7. Destruction of forest of the water catchment area due illegal logging

8. The Murum Dam

9. The MurumDam protest

10. The MurumDam Court case

11. Characteristic of Civil Society • The cultural characteristic of the Malaysian people is another factor that cannot be ignored as it assumes a crucial role in the way environmental rules and regulations are being enforced. • Malaysians are known to suppress their inner feelings in order to avoid criticism, conflict, disagreement and controversy in conducting all interpersonal relations in a smooth and unthreatening manner. • The Southeast Asian style of dealing with unpleasant or dangerous situations is avoidance and silence, repressing emotions with the hope that the problem will disappear if matters are smoothed over. • Malaysians failed to realise that environmental protection is not a matter exclusively to be dealt with by the government, but a matter that requires full social participation to ensure successful results.

12. Execution of Court Orders and Judgment Thank You