Last days of the vampire kings on earth (repost)

Ex-employee implicates Taib Mahmud in video

Malaysiakini | March 3, 2011 | 1:34pm


A video implicating Abdul Taib Mahmud has emerged in which the Sarawak chief minister's own former employee fingers him as the owner of wealth worth billions of ringgit in North America alone.

In 'Film Tribute to Ross Boyert' on whistleblower website Sarawak Report (SR), Boyert - the former chief operating officer of Taib's Sakti International, Wallysons Inc and two other US corporations holding up to US$80 million in properties - speaks out against the chief minister.

Boyert also confirms what has been documented elsewhere about Taib's possessions in the US and Canada, that Taib “was the boss” of Sakti International” in the US and linked to the Sakto corporation in Canada.

“Taib is the owner of this company and of all of its assets,“ said Boyert in the 16-minute video documentary.

Taib is said to be linked to a little under four dozen other companies around the world, including 13 in Malaysia, 10 in Australia, seven in Hong Kong and three in the British Virgin Islands.

In addition to Taib's billionaire status, Boyert also refers to the chief minister's Canadian son-in-law Sean Murray who chairs the Ottawa-based Sakto corporation and acts upon the instruction of the Sarawak chief minister.

“Taib was the one who instructed Sean Murray to take over Sakti International,” said Boyert.

When asked how he knew that, Boyert said: “Sean told me.”

The video, according to SR, contains interviews with Boyert and his wife only weeks before Boyert's mysterious death.

Boyert had in the video also accused the Taib of having mounted campaign to discredit and ruin him.

“We are talking about an extensive, expensive operation... It's designed to break you down. It's designed to make you so discredited that no one will believe you,” said Boyert.

It was as if Taib's message was “You sue me and we'll show what will happen to you and your family,” said Boyert.

The alleged harassment took place ever since he took his former employer to court for unlawful dismissal and breach of contract.

In a press release on the video, Swiss-based social and environmental activists the Bruno Manser Fund (BMF) said it and its campaign partners in the US, the UK and Malaysia are asking the US' FBI "to probe the circumstances that led to the death of former Taib US aide Ross Boyert, to review the FBI's rental contracts with the Taib-controlled firm Wallysons Inc and to freeze all Taib assets in the United States."

Boyert died last October, a few weeks after he gave the website the expose on Taib.

He was found dead in a rare form of suspected suicide, with a bag taped around his head in an LA motel room.

In the video, the producer said Boyert had spoken about his predicament in a way that has come back to haunt her.

In reference to the ordeal and pressure he was made to undergo at the hands allegedly of Taib's vindictiveness, Boyert said: "The best analogy is 'if you put a plastic bag over somebody's head, eventually they're going to succumb for lack of oxygen. That's all.”

It was an uncanny description of his death that occurred a few weeks later.

In its tribute to Boyert, SR said: "We filmed with the Boyerts and came to like and respect them. We now present that story as a tribute to their bravery in speaking out."

FILM TRIBUTE TO ROSS BOYERT

[First posted 4 March 2011]

People of Sarawak, Free Yourself from the Clutches of The Beast!

Taib Mahmud, Chief Minister of Sarawak since 1981, owns rapacious corporations like Naim Cendera and Cahya Mata Sarawak. Taib refuses to answer questions thrown at him regarding his wealth. His long reign as "Robber Baron of Sarawak" has become synonymous with ecocide and ethnocide on a massive scale.

From the Malaysian History blog, 30 July 2007:

WINNING OVER SABAH AND SARAWAK

INITIALLY the leaders of Sabah (then British North Borneo) and Sarawak were opposed to Malaysia or at best gave it a lukewarm welcome after it was proposed by Tunku Abdul Rahman on May 27, 1961 at the Foreign Correspondents Association in Singapore.

“Let us become independent first and then we will decide whether to join Malaysia or not,” said Tan Sri Ong Kee Hui, the Kuching mayor and leader of the Sarawak United People’s Party (SUPP), formed in 1959.

Other prominent Sarawak leaders like Datu Abang Haji Openg – later the first local governor – and Abang Mustapha Abang Haji Abdul Gapor who are also members of the Council Negeri, considered the oldest legislature in the country, were unanimous in their opposition to the Tunku’s plan.

In Sabah, Tun Fuad Stephens (then Donald Stephens), a newspaper publisher, a member of the State Council and Huguan Siou (paramount leader) of the Kadazan/Dusun people, shared the same view as Ong. “We must not be seen as changing colonial masters,” was the response of the United National Kadazan Organisation (Unko), a party Fuad formed with Keningau

They contacted leaders from the other territories to see whether they should revive the idea of a federation of Borneo states of Sabah, Sarawak and Brunei instead.

Many of the leaders believed that Malaysia’s formation was not really meant to benefit the people of the two territories but more to provide a solution to solve the problems of Britain, Malaya and Singapore.

Britain needed to withdraw from the East but it could not just up and go without ensuring its former colonies’ survival. Malaya wanted to increase the number of bumiputras to ensure that their numbers were bigger than the others. Singapore, threatened by communists, wanted security.


The leaders opposed the plan because they feared their people would be at the mercy of the commercially superior Chinese whose numbers would increase with Malaysia, and they also feared that they would eventually be sidelined by the more politically sophisticated Malays.

They also worried that their culture and polity would be gradually eroded. Thus, discussions were held on such issues as religion, education and finance where early assurances on these matters were made. Most of the discussions centred on the Sabah All-party 20-point memorandum and the Sarawak 18-point memorandum containing matters the two territories wanted to safeguard. But mostly the focus was on religion, constitutional safeguards, immigration, special position of the indigenous people, language, education and fiscal arrangements.

But even while discussions were still at the early stages, more and more leaders and their people gradually began to voice support for the plan.

[Read the rest here.]



From Malaysiakini, 26 August 2008:

THE SARAWAK DAMS: Multiple follies
Kua Kia Soong | Aug 26, 08 12:53pm

The recent announcement that the Sarawak government intends to build 12 more dams in Sarawak apart from the ill-fated Bakun dam is cause for concern.

It is a cause for grave concern. Malaysian tax payers, Malaysian forests and Malaysian indigenous people will again be the main victims of this misconceived plan.

The stop starting since the damned project was first proposed in the seventies, the proposal and abandonment of the aluminium smelter, the upsizing and downsizing of the dam, the inclusion or exclusion of the undersea cable project are all symptomatic of a wanton disregard for planning. Let me remind Malaysians of the ludicrous inconsistencies of official policy on this damned project.


In 1980, the Bakun dam was proposed with a power generating capacity of 2400MW even though the projected energy needs for the whole of Sarawak was only 200MW in 1990.

The project was thus coupled with the proposal to build the world’s longest (650km) undersea cable to transmit electricity to the peninsula. An aluminium smelter at Bintulu was also proposed to take up the surplus energy.

In 1986, the project was abandoned because of the economic recession although then Prime Minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamad announced just before the UN Conference on Environment & Development in Rio that this was "proof of Malaysia’s commitment to the environment".

In 1993, with the upturn in the Malaysian economy, the government once again announced the revival of the Bakun hydro-electric plant project.


To cushion the expected protests, the then Energy Minister S. Samy Vellu gave Parliament a poetic description of a "series of cascading dams" and not one large dam as had been originally proposed.

Before long, it was announced that the Bakun dam would be a massive 205-metre high concrete face rockfill dam, one of the highest dams of its kind in the world and it would flood an area the size of Singapore Island.

The undersea cable was again part of the project. There was also a plan for an aluminium plant, a pulp and paper plant, the world’s biggest steel plant and a high-tension and high-voltage wire industry.

Then in 1997, with the onset of the Asian financial crisis, the Bakun project was put on hold for the second time. But the scandal was, while the anthropologists in all Malaysian universities were sound asleep, the government proceeded to remove 10,000 indigenous people made up of fifteen different ethnic groups from their ancestral lands.


All this happened while the project was on hold and Malaysians shouted "Malaysia Boleh!"

In 1999, after the economy had recovered, the government again announced that the project would be resumed, albeit on a smaller scale of 500MW capacity.

Before long in 2001, the 2400MW scale was once again proposed although the submarine cable had been shelved. Today, we read reports about the government and companies still contemplating this hare-brained scheme which is now estimated to cost a whopping RM21 billion!

Not only that, we now hear that 12 more hydroelectric dams will be generating a total capacity of 7000MW by 2020 – an increase of 600 percent from its current capacity!

Who pays?

Ultimately it will be the Malaysian consumers who pay for this expensive figment of the chief minister’s wild imagination. Enough tax payers’ money has been wasted - Sarawak Hidro has already spent some RM1.5 billion on the project.

The human cost has been immeasurable - 10,000 indigenous people have been removed from their ancestral lands in 1998 even while the project had been shelved.

If the prime minister really wants to know the state of the Malaysian energy industry, he should ask for independent audits on every power station in the country. These should preferably be done by reputable international audit authorities from outside Malaysia.

We are told that TNB is now selling off property, power stations are not working at full capacity and that the electricity industry is hugely indebted.

Right now, the country is being fed conflicting reports about energy demand. There is supposed to be a 43 percent oversupply of electricity capacity in peninsula Malaysia.

Experienced Bakun dam watchers will tell you such conflicting and mutually contradictory assertions have been used by dam proponents to justify every flip flop of this misconceived project.

Apart from the economic cost and the wastage, how are investors supposed to plan for the long-term and medium term? What is the long-term plan for Bakun? Can Bakun compete with the rest of the world or for that matter, Indonesia?


Aluminium smelters to take up the bulk of Bakun electricity have been mentioned ever since the conception of the Bakun dam project because they are such voracious consumers of energy.

Even so, has there ever been any proper assessment of the market viability of such a project with the cheaper operating costs in China?

Does it matter that the co-owner of one of the smelters is none other than Cahya Mata Sarawak (CMS) Bhd Group that is controlled by Chief Minister Taib Mahmud’s family business interest?

Scandalous flaws in planning

Clearly, Bakun energy and Sarawak’s tinpot governance do not inspire confidence in investors. First it was Alcoa, and then Rio Tinto also had second thoughts about investing in Sarawak.

Concerned NGOs have all along called for the abandonment of this monstrous Bakun dam project because it is economically ill-conceived, socially disruptive and environmentally disastrous.

The environmental destruction is evident many miles downstream since the whole Bakun area has been logged by those who have already been paid by Sarawak Hidro.

The social atrophy among the 10,000 displaced indigenous people at the Sungei Asap resettlement scheme remains the wicked testimony of the Mahathir-Taib era. The empty promises and damned lives of the displaced people as forewarned by the concerned NGOs in 1999 have now been played out.

The economic viability of the Bakun dam project has been in doubt from the beginning and the new scheme to build 12 more dams merely represents multiple follies and a scandalous flaw in planning.

DR KUA KIA SOONG is director of Suaram.

[First posted 6 September 2008]

An uplifting email from the indefatigable Bruno Manser Fund...

Bruno Manser (25 August  1954 ~ ???)

Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear friends,

We would like to inform you that the Bruno Manser Fund is about to release an explosive report on the Malaysian Taib family, one of South East Asia's most notorious kleptocratic clans.

Sarawak has been in Taib Mahmud's
greedy clutches for more than 30 years

The report entitled The Taib Timber Mafia: Facts and Figures on Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs) from Sarawak, Malaysia contains twenty portraits and details on the corrupt business connections of long-term Sarawak Chief Minister, Abdul Taib Mahmud ("Taib"), and his closest family members and associates. Taib is the main culprit for the destructive logging of the rainforests of Sarawak, one of the world's biodiversity hotspots.

As an exclusive, the report will give estimates on the net worth of 20 Taib family members and associates and will systematically expose their business ties to the timber, plantation, construction and media sector in Malaysia and other countries such as Australia, Canada, the US, the United Kingdom and Hong Kong. The report follows up on our earlier research on the Taib family, published in December 2011.

The unembarrassable Dompok:
politician with a rhino hide

On Wednesday, 19 September 2012, the report will be presented in Brussels to the EU Commission on the occasion of a visit of the Malaysian Minister of Plantation Industries and Commodities, Bernard Dompok.

The report will be released to the general public on Thursday, 20 September 2012, 3 p.m. GMT. Copies will be sent to all major international financial services providers as well as to cabinet ministers and government agencies from OECD and ASEAN countries. The Bruno Manser Fund calls on the international community to take decisive action against the Taibs, in particular to freeze their illicit assets and to prosecute them for corruption, money-laundering and related crimes.

Interested journalists may obtain a copy of the embargoed report beforehand, by sending us an email.

Your BMF team

Legacy of rainforest "Robin Hood" lives on
11 March 2005

Bruno Manser: officially dead
but not forgotten

Environmentalist Bruno Manser has been declared officially dead by a Swiss court, five years after he disappeared in the Malaysian jungle.

But Manser’s efforts to save the rainforest have not been forgotten and continue to influence attitudes towards tropical wood.

"It’s five years since Bruno vanished without a trace, so it’s not just a legal step, but also a symbolic one," said Lukas Straumann, director of the Bruno Manser Fund, set up by the environmentalist to spearhead his campaign.

"Friends and family have had to say farewell to him in stages."

Manser became a household name in Switzerland in the 1990s, when he staged a spectacular 60-day hunger strike outside parliament in Bern to highlight the plight of Malaysia’s Penan tribesmen.

The Penan, who still live a nomadic lifestyle in the forests of Sarawak on the island of Borneo, are threatened by illegal logging practices that encroach on - and destroy - their habitat.

Manser became interested in the Penan in the 1980s and often clashed with the Malaysian authorities and timber companies as he defended tribal land rights.

Hero

"Bruno Manser is still a hero to the Penan because he made their struggle known to the world," Straumann told swissinfo. "He also made a stand when fighting deforestation and related human rights violations was not very popular."

The environmentalist spent six years living with the tribesmen. He was banned from Sarawak after launching his campaign against rainforest logging.

He disappeared in May 2000, when he is believed to have entered Sarawak secretly. Investigations by the Malaysian police and Swiss activists failed to find any trace of Manser.

Many of his friends believe he was killed because of his campaign, which embarrassed the Malaysian government and earned him plenty of enemies along the way.

But despite vanishing, Straumann says that Manser has had a powerful influence on attitudes towards tropical wood. "He is the person who made it headline news in Switzerland," he added.

[Read the rest here.]

BRUNO MANSER: TRIBUTE TO AN ECO-WARRIOR

"ARREST TAIB!" ~ NGOs CALL FOR ACTION

Posted Monday, December 12th, 2011

In a dramatic move, a group of NGOs have today called on the Malaysian Attorney General and the Inspector General of Police to arrest Abdul Taib Mahmud.

A letter drawn up by the Bruno Manser Fund and signed by a number of Malaysian and international NGOs, including Greenpeace, requests “the immediate arrest and criminal prosecution” of Taib, along with 13 family members, whom it names as “co-conspirators in the illegal appropriation of public funds.”

The demand represents the culmination of evidence against the Chief Minister, who is now internationally recognised as one of the world’s most corrupted leaders and as being personally responsible for much of the destruction of the Borneo jungle. [For full text visit stop-timber-corruption.org]

Plain evidence

The letter makes clear that so much evidence about the corruption of Taib and his family members is now publicly available that it is no longer acceptable to leave the matter with the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), which announced an investigation into the Chief Minister last year.

The letter says:

“We firmly believe that it is not enough for the MACC to announce a public investigation and immediate police action should be taken. Ample evidence of Mr Taib’s and his co-conspirators’ offenses is available, and the above-mentioned suspects might use their remaining time in freedom to destroy evidence, to intimidate possible witnesses and to transfer their substantial illicit assets out of the country.”

[Read the full story at Sarawak Report]

We all know, of course, that Taib Mahmud is by no means the only BN robber baron that must be arrested immediately. If we had more fearless and independent investigative reporters like Clare Rewcastle Brown on the job, I'm sure Najib Razak and his entire corrupt cabinet would also be on the list. Thanks to the incurable Dr M, however, every state institution has been subsumed into obsequious service of the corrupt BN regime - especially the Attorney General and the Polis Di Raja Malaysia. Which leaves it to us, the people, to make citizens' arrest a new form of national service. The next time you see BN ministers on the street, don't shake their hand - just handcuff them. If you don't have handcuffs handy, just point your bone at them (they will fade quietly away).

Sarawak natives file land rights case

Press Release dated 3 March 2011 from the Bruno Manser Fund...

Kelabit, Penan and Lun Bawang plaintiffs join forces to claim 1770 km2 of tropical rainforests in Upper Limbang, Sarawak – first land rights litigation uniting three ethnic groups in Malaysian Borneo

Sarawak natives file historic land rights case

MIRI (MALAYSIA). For the first time in the history of Malaysia, natives from three different tribes have filed a joint land rights litigation. This morning, representatives from the Kelabit, Penan and Lun Bawang communities of Upper Limbang, Sarawak, on the island of Borneo have filed a joint land rights litigation at the Miri High Court in which they are claiming native customary rights over 1770 km2 of tropical forests in the Limbang river basin. The case is being represented by native rights lawyer Baru Bian who also heads the Sarawak branch of the oppositional Justice Party (PKR).

The joint claim over an area twice the size of Singapore is directed against the Sarawak state government and four Malaysian logging and plantation companies that had been given concessions over the native lands without the communities’ consent. The companies listed as defendants are Ravenscourt Sdn Bhd, Billion Venture Sdn Bhd, Limba Jaya Timber Sdn Bhd and Kubang Sri Jaya Sdn Bhd. Ravenscourt is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Samling group which has recently been blacklisted by the Norwegian government for its involvement in illegal activities and environmentally destructive logging.

Click on map to enlarge

The Kelabit, Penan and Lun Bawang plaintiffs have been living in the Upper Limbang region for hundreds of years. Since the early 1980s, the region has been logged under a number of logging concessions. Currently, the area is being threatened by a major dam project on the Limbang river and the conversion of secondary forests into oil palm and paper tree plantations. All this while, the native communities had no say whatsoever on the use of their native lands by the Sarawak government and had only received ridiculous compensation payments by some logging companies who made millions of the dollars from logging the tropical hardwoods in the region.

After having lodged the case, representatives of the native communities displayed a banner in front of the Miri High Court building which read “Indigenous people taking action for change to save the last remaining Sarwak rainforest”. Currently, close to 200 native communities from Sarawak have challenged the state government over its land rights policies. The native land issue is also a heated subject during the runup to the next state election which is to be held before July 2011.

Please contact us for more information:

Bruno Manser Fund, Socinstrasse 37, 4051 Basel, Switzerland, Tel. +41 61 261 94 74
www.bmf.ch, www.stop-timber-corruption.org

TAIB MAHMUD, TIME'S UP FOR YOU!

PENAN TRIBE ESCALATES ANTI-LOGGING CAMPAIGN

Malaysiakini | 23 Aug 2009 | 11:13am

Hundreds of Penan tribespeople armed with spears and blowpipes have set up new blockades deep in the Borneo jungles, escalating their campaign against logging and palm oil plantations.

Three new barricades, guarded by Penan men and women who challenged approaching timber trucks, have been established in recent days. There are now seven in the interior of Sarawak.

"They are staging this protest now because most of their land is already gone, destroyed by logging and grabbed by the plantation companies," said Jok Jau Evong from Friends of the Earth in Sarawak.

"This is the last chance for them to protect their territory. If they don't succeed, there will be no life for them, no chance for them to survive."

Penan chiefs said that after enduring decades of logging which has decimated the jungles they rely on for food and shelter, they now face the new threat of clear-felling to make way for crops of palm oil and planted timber.

"Since these companies came in, life has been very hard for us. Before it was easy to find animals in the forest and hunt them with blowpipes," said Alah Beling, headman of Long Belok where one of the barricades has been built.

"The forest was once our supermarket, but now it's hard to find food, the wild boar have gone," he said in his settlement, a scenic cluster of wooden dwellings home to 298 people and reachable only by a long suspension bridge.

Alah Beling said he fears that plans to establish plantations for palm oil - which is used in food and for biofuel - on their ancestral territory, will threaten their lifestyle and further pollute the village river with pesticide run-off.

"Once our river was so clear you could see fish swimming six feet deep," he said as he gestured at the waterway, which like most others in the region has been turned reddish-brown by the soil that cascades from eroded hillsides.

Indigenous rights group Survival International said the blockades are the most extensive since the late 1980s and early 1990s when the Penan's campaign to protect their forests shot to world attention.

"It's amazing they're still struggling on after all these years, more than 20 years after they began to try to fight off these powerful companies," said Miriam Ross from the London-based group.

Official figures say there are more than 16,000 Penan in Sarawak, including about 300 who still roam the jungle and are among the last truly nomadic people on Earth.
The blockades, which Friends of the Earth said involve 13 Penan communities home to up to 3,000 people, are aimed at several timber and plantation companies including Samling, KTS, Shin Yang and Rimbunan Hijau.

After clearing much of the valuable timber from Sarawak, some of these companies are now converting their logging concessions into palm oil and acacia plantations.

"They told us earlier this month they were coming to plant palm oil, and I said if you do we will blockade," said Alah Beling.

"They told us we don't have any rights to the land, that they have the licence to plant here. I felt very angry - how can they say we have no right to this land where our ancestors have lived for generations?"

Even on land that has been logged in the past, Penan can still forage for sago which is their staple food, medicinal plants, and rattan and precious aromatic woods which are sold to buy essential goods.

"Oil palm is worse because nothing is left. If they take all our land, we will not be able to survive," the Long Belok headman said.

Masing dismisses Penan as good storytellers


Sarawak's Rural Development Minister James Masing (right) admitted some logging companies had behaved badly and "caused extensive damage" but said the Penan were "good storytellers" and their claims should be treated with caution.

"The Penan are the darlings of the West, they can't do any wrong in the eyes of the West," he said.

Masing said disputes were often aimed at wringing more compensation from companies, or stemmed from conflicts between Penan and other indigenous tribes including the Kenyah and Kayan about overlapping territorial claims.

He said the current surge in plantation activity was triggered by Sarawak's goal to double its palm oil coverage to one million hectares - an area 14 times bigger than Singapore.
"The time we have been given to do this is running short. 2010 is next year so we want to make that target and that is why there may be a push to do it now, to fulfil our goal established 10 years ago," he said.

"In some areas the logging has not been done in accordance with the rules and some of the loggers have caused extensive damage. That does happen and I do sympathise with the Penan along those lines," he said.

"But the forest has become a source of income for the state government so we have to exploit it".

Whole valleys stripped of vegetation


Driving through the unsealed roads that reach deep into the Borneo interior, evidence of the new activity is clear with whole valleys stripped of vegetation and crude terraces carved into the hills ready for seedlings.

Most of the companies declined to comment on the allegations made by the Penan, but Samling said it "regrets to learn about the blockades".

"We have long worked with communities in areas we operate to ensure they lead better lives," it said in a statement.

Its website says its acacia timber plantations in Sarawak will "enhance the health of the forests" and that it uses "only the most sensitive ways to clear the land".

The Penan allegations could discredit Malaysia's claims that it produces sustainable palm oil, particularly in Europe and the US where activists blame the industry for deforestation and driving orangutans towards extinction.

Indigenous campaigners say that past blockades have seen violence and arrests against tribespeople, but village chiefs - some of whom were detained during the 1980s blockades - said they did not fear retribution.

"We're not afraid. They're the ones destroying my property. Last time we didn't know the law and now to protect ourselves, but now we know our rights," said Ngau Luin, the chief of Long Nen where another barricade was set up.

An AFP team reporting at the blockades was photographed by angry timber company officials, and later intercepted at a roadblock by police armed with machineguns and taken away for questioning.

The plight of the Penan was made famous in the 1980s by environmental activist Bruno Manser, who waged a crusade to protect their way of life and fend off the loggers. He vanished in 2000 - many suspect foul play. - AFP

TRIBUTE TO AN ECOWARRIOR

Calls for Total Ban of Forest Burnings in Bakun Dam Reservoir

Miri, Sarawak, MALAYSIA: – The Sarawak Conservation Action Network (SCANE) is shocked to learn that forests have been burning within the catchments and reservoir area of the Bakun Hydroelectric Power Dam project without any action being taken against the culprit by the Government Authorities.

SCANE has been informed that the forest burnings were purportedly done as directed by the Sarawak Hidro Sdn Bhd to wipe-out the forest that would be impounded by the dam. The Bakun Hydroelectric Power Dam project is owned and developed by Sarawak Hidro Sdn Bhd, a fully-owned unit of the Minister of Finance Inc, Malaysia (MOF Inc).

SCANE found out that Sarawak Hidro Sdn Bhd has started with the work to clear the forest within the entire Bakun dam reservoir. The contracts for clear-cutting of forest have been commissioned to some contractors since beginning of the year. The forest area which will be cleared for the dam is 80,000 ha that is roughly the size of Singapore Island.

Recently the Sarawak Hidro Sdn Bhd managing director Zulkifle Osman announced that the impoundment of water catchments would start in October, which by then the whole dam reservoir will be flooded. By July 2010, testing for electricity transmission from Bakun dam will start. The Bakun reservoir catchment comprises some 20 sub-catchments with the main river draining the catchment is the Balui, which in turn is fed by the Murum, Bahau and Linau Rivers.

SCANE was told that one of the conditions as stipulated in the contract is that the contractors and/or its sub-contractors, agents and/or workers are required to do burnings on the cleared and felled forest, without which they would not be fully paid for the work done and/or their contract would be terminated. Over the past few months, large tracts of forest have already been cleared and felled within the Bakun dam reservoir area.

SCANE is wondering as how the Sarawak Natural Resources and Environment Board (NREB), the law enforcer of the Natural Resources and Environment Ordinance (NREO) fails to closely monitor the actions of Sarawak Hidro when its development activities are detrimental to the environment. It is scandalous that the Sarawak Hidro does not strictly follow the Environmental Management Plan (EMP), if any, as such stated in the Bakun Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) Report.

With the current long spell dry weather, the Sarawak Hidro Sdn Bhd’s contractors and/or its sub-contractors, agents and/or workers have been doing a series of forest burnings. SCANE has received reports that there were open burnings carried out in the area. Fires were reported at different locations and sites in the area. In certain sites, where the fires were not being able to completely razed the felled trees, logs and debris, their workers are asked to gathered all the logs and reduce to ashes. SCANE was told that those workers who set the fires were not aware at all whether any permits for open burning had been issued by NREB as they merely followed the directive of Sarawak Hidro Sdn Bhd.

The unscrupulous activity of clearing and open burning of forests by Sarawak Hidro within the Bakun dam reservoir area is clearly violating to the Natural Resources and Environment Ordinance (NREO). It is such outrageous that Sarawak Hidro actions to wipe out the forest within the reservoir area without having any sense of responsibility and sensitivity toward the environment, though knowingly that its activity would cause immeasurable impacts to environment. Due to the large scale nature of such activity, burning should be ban totally before it could become an environmental crisis within Bakun dam reservoir area and beyond. Hence, it is within the jurisdiction of the NREB to take appropriate measures to ensure such activities from reoccurrence.

SCANE is extremely concerns with the environmental implications of development activities surrounding the Bakun Hydroelectric power dam project that causes drastic land-use change and deforestation of sensitive ecosystems.

SCANE warns that removing vast tract of forest, open burning and forest fires in the dam reservoir not only puts flora and fauna at risk by reducing their habitat, but also contributes to long-term environmental problems such as climate change.

SCANE strongly urges the State Government of Sarawak to put a total ban on any forest clearance and burnings in Bakun dam reservoir area until appropriate measures and management plan are in place. With immediate action, the NREB, with the conferred power and jurisdictions should take stringent action against the developer of Bakun dam project for indiscriminate burnings of forest in the reservoir area.

Thank you.

Raymond Abin

National Coordinator

Note: Sarawak Conservation Action Network (SCANE) is a coalition of leading environmental and indigenous rights organizations in Sarawak whose members include Borneo Resources Institute Malaysia (BRIMAS), Indigenous Peoples Development Centre (IPDC), Network of Customary Land Rights of Sarawak Indigenous Peoples (TAHABAS), Centre for Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Sarawak (CRIPS), Sarawak Indigenous Lawyers Associates (SILA), Serakup Raban Iban Bintulu (SRIBin), Gerempung Anakbiak Sekabai (GAS), Indigenous Peoples Institute Malaysia Sarawak (IPIMAS), Society for Alternative Living (PPU) and Native Longhouse Action Committees through out Sarawak.

The Times on the "Rape of Borneo"

"GREEN" DAMS HASTEN RAPE OF BORNEO FORESTS

Tribal peoples are fighting huge hydro-electric projects that are carving up the island's rainforest

The Sunday Times
March 15, 2009
Michael Sheridan, Kuching, Sarawak

THE ISLAND of Borneo, a fragile treasure house of rainforests, rare animals and plants, is under threat from plans for Chinese engineers to build 12 dams that will cut through virgin land and displace thousands of native Dayak people.

The government of the Malaysian state of Sarawak says the dams are the first stage of a “corridor of renewable energy” that will create 1.5m jobs through industries powered by safe, clean hydro-electricity.

Campaigners are furious but appear powerless in the face of a project they fear will compound the devastation wreaked on Borneo’s peoples and land by previous dam projects and the felling of its forests.


They point to the ruin caused by the levelling of millions of acres of trees for oil palm plantations to meet the world’s demand for biofuels.

The dams would slice across a vast sweep of Sarawak, a place where wisps of cloud cling to remote, tree-clad peaks, huge butterflies flit through the foliage and orang-utans, sun bears and leopards roam.

There is more than an ecological argument over the scheme. The initial contract has gone to the Chinese state-owned company that built the controversial Three Gorges dam – a project described by Dai Qing, the campaigning Chinese journalist, as “a black hole of corruption.”

Teams from the China Three Gorges Project Corporation are at work on the first of the 12 new dams at Murum, deep in the interior, from where Sarawak’s great rivers uncoil towards the South China Sea.

Tribal peoples are dazed and frightened, telling a visiting researcher last week that they had been ordered off their ancestral lands. Signs in Chinese were posted all over the project site.


No financial details or contracts have been publicly disclosed. Analysts in China say the work is likely to have been financed in part by a loan from a state institution.

Critics argue that Sarawak does not need more electricity. It produces a 20% surplus and there is as yet no cable to deliver power to peninsular Malaysia – which itself generates more energy than it needs.

Company records filed with the Malaysia stock exchange show that a big beneficiary of the policy is a firm whose shareholders and directors include the wife and family of Abdul Taib Mahmud, Sarawak’s chief minister.

Taib, 72, who drives around in a vanilla Rolls-Royce, is one of the richest and most powerful men in Malaysian politics. He also serves as Sarawak’s finance minister and planning minister.

The family-owned firm, Cahya Mata Sarawak, has interests in cement, construction, quarrying and road building. It has signed a memorandum of understanding with Rio Tinto, the London-listed mining group, to build a “world class” aluminium smelter that will get its electricity from a dam at Bakun.

The Bakun dam, a separate project due to be completed by 2011, has already displaced an estimated 10,000 indigenous people, leading to bitter legal battles and a chorus of dismay from economists about cost overruns.

Malaysia’s reinvigorated opposition is now campaigning against what it calls “crony capitalism”, helping hitherto powerless tribal peoples to challenge in the courts land grabs and cheating.

For all that, it may be too late to save the natural bounty of Borneo itself. Orphaned orang-utans, piteously holding the outstretched hands of their human saviours, are the most conspicuous symbols of its fragility.

Divided between Malaysia and Indonesia, with Brunei occupying a tiny enclave in the north, Borneo’s riches have ensured its plunder.

One reason is the voracious world demand for timber. The other is the fashion for biofuels made from palm oil. Almost half of Borneo’s rainforests have been cut down. Two million acres have vanished every year as trees are felled, the wood sold and the land turned over to oil palms.

The greatest plunderer of all was Indonesia’s late dictator, Suharto, who doled out timber concessions to generals and cronies during his 32 years in power.

Now the central government in Jakarta is winning praise for a determined crackdown that has slowed the rate of illegal logging.

However, much of Indonesian Borneo is already laid waste. Enormous fires cast a perpetual pall of toxic haze, making Indonesia the world’s third largest greenhouse gas polluter after China and the United States.


“Green gold”, or palm oil, poses an even more insidious threat because it promises prosperity and development to the numerous poor of Borneo – along with immense rewards for the elites.

The vegetable oil comes from crushed palm husks. Long used for cooking, cosmetics and soap, it has now become a principal source of biodiesel fuel.

Malaysia and Indonesia produce about 85% of the world’s supply of palm oil – most of it on Borneo.

The price of this apparently environment-friendly fuel is high. Its damage far outweighs its benefits, according to a recent international study published in the journal Conservation Biology.

One of the research team, Emily Fitzherbert of the Zoological Society of London, concluded that oil palm as a biofuel was “not a green option.”


John Anthony Paul, a Dayak notable in Sarawak, explained it another way: “There’s a stench from the palm oil mill close to my longhouse. There’s a huge quantity of slurry and sludge. Our water is deteriorating. Many fish disappear and there are more floods. Pesticides leach into our soil. The insects start to change, so the pollination changes and so does the quality of our fruits and crops. It’s unsustainable.”

Resistance is growing. Last week two Dayaks walked for four hours, carrying their sharp-edged parangs, or blades, to meet me near a cluster of huts housing Chinese dam workers.

The scene was Bengoh, a place so wild, flower-strewn and lovely that it would have made a tourist poster were it not for the grumble of construction noise and the gouged earth.

The Dayaks are being forced out of their villages because engineers from SinoHydro, a second Chinese contractor, are building yet another dam to improve the water supply to Kuching, capital of Sarawak.

“We are 28 families, in our village since our ancestors,” said Simo Anakbekam, 48. “The government says we must leave. We want them to recognise our rights to our land.”

The state government says it has offered adequate compensation plus resettlement to new homes with better jobs, health and education.


However, most people in Simo’s village just want to move higher up their familiar mountainside and cannot understand why they must depart for the hot, marshy lowlands.

It turned out to be an example of legal coercion with the familiar echo of “crony capitalism.” Armed with eviction orders, the dam builders told the Dayaks their presence might contaminate the new water supply.

However, lawyers for the villagers found draft plans for the Bengoh dam – drawn up, the documents state, with input from Halcrow, the British consultancy firm – which reveal that unnamed investors plan to build two resorts on the site.

The Dayaks are now fighting for better compensation and the right to stay in the area.


All over Sarawak, tribal people have lost their ancestral lands to similar gambits. “They don’t know that this thing is coming until they hear the sound of the bulldozers,” said See Chee How, a lawyer and civil rights activist.

It is worse deep in the northeast interior, where logging, palm oil and dams threaten the existence of the Penan, a nomadic tribe. Last week a British researcher for Survival International, the campaign group, found people running short of food.

“They hunt but go for weeks at a time without finding a single animal. Fish are also scarce, because the logging silts up the rivers. Sago is becoming more and more difficult to find,” said the researcher, who asked not to be named.

“One old man told me that the changes could be seen in the bodies of the young people, who were thinner and weaker than the people of his generation. The Penan asked me again and again to get news of their plight to the outside world.”

The ravishing of Borneo – its peoples, animals and the land itself – has roots in the past. But there may be a remedy, too.

Sarawak led a romantic, isolated existence under the “white rajahs” of the Brooke dynasty, whose adventurous founder, James Brooke, established himself in 1848 as an absolute ruler. His heirs held power until 1946.

The Brookes disdained the British empire’s commerce and industry, seeking to preserve a noble Dayak culture in all its splendour.

They established native customary rights by which district officers recorded land tenure as a way to stop headhunting wars among the Dayaks. The rajahs also granted leases and published an official gazette.

Malaysian courts have upheld cases based on such documents and now a hunt is on for letters folded away in longhouses and yellowing copies in archives in Britain. For many in faraway Sarawak, it may be their only hope of justice.

[Several images courtesy of Bruno Manser Fonds]