An engine of corruption the likes of which the world has never seen...

Asia Sentinel reviews Money Logging: On the Trail of Asia's Timber Mafia...

Taib Mahmud, chief minister of Sarawak for 33 years & consummate robber baron

A sad tale of the Asian timber mafia and the man who did more than anything to create it, Abdul Taib Mahmud. By Lukas Straumann, Bergli Books. Softback,  313 pp.  Available in major bookstores.

On Oct. 3, 2011, a depressed, paranoid former chief operating officer for a San Francisco-based property company called Sakti International named Ross Boyert slipped a plastic bag over his head, taped it tight and suffocated himself to death in a Los Angeles hotel room.  He was 61.

But Boyert, however delusionary he was when he died, left behind him an explosive legacy – the details of virtually all of the properties owned by Abdul Taib Mahmud, the longest serving public official in Malaysia.  It is a breathtaking collection according to the documents that Boyert - who was fired by the Taib interests - gave to a crusading journalist named Clare Rewcastle Brown.  They show that Taib, through nominees, family members and other subterfuges, is worth in excess of US$21 billion.  

Taib is not mentioned on the Forbes list of Malaysia’s richest, but if he were, he would be worth almost twice as much as the man listed as richest - Robert Kuok, whose fortune is in property, sugar, palm oil and shipping. He would also be about halfway up the list of the world’s 50 richest billionaires although his name is not mentioned there either.  That is because, according to this book by Lukas Straumann, Taib amassed his entire fortune illegally, as undoubtedly a handful of others have around the world that remains hidden. Nonetheless, according to Boyert’s documents and the research by Rewcastle Brown and Straumann, he is an engine of corruption the likes of which the world has never seen. 

Taib built his real estate empire in Canada, the United States, Australia and the East Malaysia state of Sarawak on timber.  Into the process, in his 33 years as chief minister, he staged some of the most depressing environmental destruction on the planet.  An estimated 98 percent of the old-growth timber of Sarawak, a state three times the size of Switzerland, is gone, sold via timber  permits to logging companies, many of them connected to him,  that shipped the logs to Japan, China and across much of the rest of the world.

[Read the full review here.]

PHOTOGRAPH BY MATTHIAS KLUM, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE

CAN BORNEO'S TRIBES SURVIVE THE BIGGEST ENVIRONMENTAL CRIME OF OUR TIMES?

[First posted 12 January 2015]

BRUNO MANSER: Tribute to an Ecowarrior (repost)

Bruno Manser (born August 25, 1954 in Basel, Switzerland) was an environmental activist. He was well-known in Switzerland as a public activist for rainforest preservation and the protection of indigenous peoples.

Life with the Penans

Manser created richly illustrated notebooks during his stay from 1984 to 1990 with the Penan people, in the jungles of the East Malaysian state of Sarawak, on the island of Borneo, near the Indonesian border of Kalimantan. He stayed with the nomadic band of Along Sega, who became the figurehead of the Penan's struggle. Manser also visited many other settled Penan communities in the Upper Baram district. These notebooks were later published by the Christoph Merian press in Basel. Bruno Manser, however, was declared persona non grata in Malaysia and had to leave the country with a bounty of $40,000 on his head.


Activism

Manser protested on an international level on behalf of Sarawak's Penan tribe. On 17 July 1991 Manser chained himself to a lamppost with a banner during the G7 summit until cut loose by the police. His protest was featured on the front page of The Independent newspaper the next day. In 1992 he parachuted into the Rio World Summit on the Environment.

Disappearance

As of 2006, Manser has been declared missing and presumed dead. His last known communication is a letter mailed to his girlfriend on May 22nd, 2000, from the village of Bario, in the Kelabit Highlands, Sarawak, where he had returned to meet the nomadic Penan he had lived with for so long.

Manser is still regarded by the Penan as somewhat of an idol, named Lakei Penan (Penan Male). A man from the outside world who united the Penan and was accused by the Sarawak government of instigating blockades of logging roads (although no proof was ever produced). Manser's efforts created an impact in Tokyo and Europe, alerting people to the inhumanity of the tropical timber industry.

After search expeditions proved fruitless, a civil court in Basel ruled on March 10th, 2005, that Bruno Manser be considered dead. Manser's unpopularity with Sarawak's government and the logging companies such as Samling Plywood - who have been known to use intimidation and violence as scare tactics - have raised suspicions about his disappearance, none of which has yet been proved.

Anonymous information concerning the presumed murder of Bruno Manser can be sent to this address. [From Wikipedia]


BRUNO AND THE BLOWPIPES
Who will determine the future of Sarawak's Penan?

by Paul Spencer Sochaczewski © 2001

SARAWAK, MALAYSIA: Bruno Manser has disappeared in Borneo and is feared dead.

Manser, 47, was last seen in May 2000 in the isolated village of Bario in the Malaysian state of Sarawak, close to the border with Indonesia. The Swiss had illegally entered Sarawak to rejoin his tribal friends, the Penan, with whom Manser had spent some six years fighting the timber operators that natives claim are destroying their forest home.

I've met Manser several times. We are not close, but I respect his understanding of the realpolitik that is at the heart of most fights between native peoples and paternalistic governments.

He achieved worldwide recognition from 1984-1990 when he lived in the rainforest with the semi-nomadic Penan of Sarawak. Malaysian officials saw him as a fugitive and a provocateur and called him an "enemy of the state number one." Manser constantly avoided arrest with the panache of a Swiss Robin Hood. When he left Sarawak, through Brunei, he returned to Switzerland to create the non-profit Bruno Manser Fonds.

In 1999 he returned to Sarawak and paraglided onto the front lawn of Sarawak Chief Minister Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud's high security residence. Manser offered a truce in exchange for the government creating a biosphere reserve for the Penan. The Swiss man with the impish grin and John Lennon glasses was deported.

Manser has arguably been the most potent catalyst for media coverage of the fight by the Penan, and other Sarawak natives, to protect their forests against what they say are insensitive governments and greedy timber barons.

Defensive Sarawak government officials note that 95% of the state's substantial oil revenue goes to federal coffers, leaving Sarawak little choice but to earn money from natural products, of which timber is by far the most profitable. "Where are we to get money except through the forest," asks Dato James Wong, former Sarawak Minister of Tourism and Local Government and one of the state's leading timber concessionaires.

Malaysia is the world's leading exporter, by far, of tropical logs, tropical sawn wood, and tropical veneer, and second, after Indonesia, a far larger country, of tropical plywood.

According to Bruno Manser Fonds, more than 70% of Sarawak's rainforest has been cut during the past 20 years. Today Malaysian companies run timber operations and plywood mills as far afield as Guyana, Suriname, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, according to a report by Nigel Sizer of World Resources Institute and Dominiek Plouvier, an independent forestry consultant.

I served in the United States Peace Corps in Sarawak, not too far from where Bruno has disappeared. For my job (and pleasure) I travelled to isolated longhouses, occasionally running into Penan, who appeared like a breath of wind, gratefully accepted some tobacco or salt, and then went about their business.

During those admittedly idyllic days we would throw a circular fishing net into rivers and come up with more than enough fish for dinner. We would go out at night to hunt wild boar and more often than not return with a hairy pig on our shoulders. The rivers were clean, and jungle gibbons hooted their morning call behind the longhouses.

On subsequent trips back to Sarawak I was angry by the desolation of the landscape by timber operators, and heard complaints from dozens of people in dozens of longhouses. Their homes were being destroyed and they weren't getting anything for it. Fishing and hunting was terrible. The rivers were dangerous places, muddy and filled with debris from timber operations.

I visited Penans who had been resettled into government built longhouses - ugly structures with standard government issue architecture similar to army barracks or timber camp housing. Tin roofs amplified the heat, making the residences uninhabitable during the day. The Penan I saw were listless, with vacant eyes. True, they now had access to basic health care and simple schools, but it seemed as if all the energy had been sucked from their thin frames.


When I discussed these issues with Malaysian officials I got a common defensive response, basically, "don't tell us what to do, we know what's best for the Penan and the forests."

"Look at this map," notes Chris Elliott, director of the WWF-World Wide Fund for Nature Forests for Life Campaign. He points to an amorphous shaped illustration published in the Bruno Manser Fonds newsletter that indicates the territory of nomadic Penan and remaining virgin forest in Sarawak. "Bruno backed the Sarawak authorities into a corner by telling them what they should do. Even the slightest whiff of Western lecturing will put them on the defensive," he adds, noting that you'll find similar conflicts and reactions in places like British Columbia in Canada, parts of Australia, Indonesia and Brazil.

Perhaps it was a sloppy tactic - using western style confrontation to get policy changes in an Asian country.

Certainly, Malaysian officials resent being told what to do by pesky foreigners.

During the height of Manser's long Sarawak escapade in the 1980s, Malaysia's Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamed had this testy exchange of correspondence with young Darrell Abercrombie from Surrey, England.

Using his best penmanship, the boy wrote:

"I am 10 years old and when I am older I hope to study animals in the tropical rain forests. But if you let the lumber companys [sic] carry on there will not be any left. And millions of Animals will die. Do you think that is right just so one rich man gets another million pounds or more. I think it is disgraceful."

The Prime Minister replied on August 15, 1987:

"Dear Darrell, It is disgraceful that you should be used by adults for the purpose of trying to shame us because of our extraction of timber from our forests.

"For the information of the adults who use you I would like to say that it is not a question of one rich man making a million pounds...

"The timber industry helps hundreds of thousands of poor people in Malaysia. Are they supposed to remain poor because you want to study tropical animals?

"When the British ruled Malaysia they burnt millions of acres of Malaysian forests so that they could plant rubber. Millions of animals died because of the burning. Malaysians got nothing from the felling of the timber. In addition when the rubber was sold practically all the profit was taken to England. What your father's fathers did was indeed disgraceful.

"If you don't want us to cut down our forests, tell your father to tell the rich countries like Britain to pay more for the timber they buy from us.

"If you are really interested in tropical animals, we have huge National Parks where nobody is allowed to fell trees or kill animals.

"I hope you will tell the adults who made use of you to learn all the facts. They should not be too arrogant and think they know how best to run a country. They should expel all the people living in the British countryside and allow secondary forests to grow and fill these new forests with wolves and bears etc. so you can study them before studying tropical animals.

"I believe strongly that children should learn all about animals and love them. But adults should not teach children to be rude to their elders."


What might have happened to Manser?

Perhaps the Malaysian security forces finally caught him and left him for compost in the rainforest. That way the authorities would have saved themselves an embarrassingly visible deportation or trial.

Another possibility, which I hope is the case, is that Manser has gone walkabout and is hanging out with his Penan buddies. Perhaps he got bored with Switzerland, perhaps he felt that he could do more for their cause by advising them close up. Perhaps he is planning a large media coup.

But Newsweek has reported that four Penan-led search parties have not turned up any traces of Manser, and John Kuenzli, secretary of the Bruno Manser Fonds, says, "We are resigned [to the fact] that if Bruno Manser were still alive, he would have been found." Perhaps Bruno's fate is destined to become an unsolved Asian mystery, like the 1967 disappearance of Thai silk entrepreneur Jim Thompson in Malaysia's Cameron Highlands or Michael Rockefeller's disappearance in the Asmat region of New Guinea.

And what will happen to the approximately 9,000 Penan, of whom about 300 are jungle wanderers?

Certainly change is inevitable for the Penan and the thousands of other, generally more sophisticated, indigenous people of Sarawak.

Who has the blueprint for that change?

Several years ago I consulted James Wong Kim Min (left). Dato James was concurrently the Sarawak State Minister of Tourism and Local Government and one of the state's biggest timber tycoons. James Wong loved to talk with foreigners about the Penan, whom the foreign press has idealized as a group of innocent, down-trodden, blowpipe wielding, loin-clothed people who are wise in the ways of the forest but hopelessly naive when faced with modern Malaysian politics.

"I met with Bruno's Penans in the upper Limbang [River]," he said. "I asked the Penan who will help you if you're sick? Bruno?" Here Wong laughed. "The Penans now realize they've been exploited. I tell them the government is there to help them. But I ask them how can I see you if you've blocked the road that I've built for you?"

I asked if he had a message for his critics.

"If [the west] can do as well as we have done and enjoy life as much as we do then they can criticize us. We run a model nation. We have twenty-five races and many different religions living side by side without killing each other. Compare that to Bosnia or Ireland. We've achieved a form of Nirwana, a utopia."

I explained my experience with Penan who had been encouraged by generous government incentives to resettle into longhouses. How their natural environment had been hammered, how their faces were devoid of spirit and energy, how they had seemingly tumbled even further down the Sarawak social totem pole.

In reply, Wong lectured me, as I have been lectured by numerous Asian officials when I raised similar concerns. In effect, he said "We just want our cousins the naked Penan to enjoy the same benefits we civilized folk enjoy."

"We are very unfairly criticized by the west," Wong added. "As early as 1980 I was concerned about the future of the Penans." He read me a poem he had written:

O Penan - Jungle wanderers of the Tree
What would the future hold for thee?....
Perhaps to us you may appear deprived and poor
But can Civilization offer anything better?....
And yet could Society in good conscience
View your plight with detached indifference
Especially now we are an independent Nation
Yet not lift a helping hand to our fellow brethren?
Instead allow him to subsist in Blowpipes and clothed in Chawats*
An anthropological curiosity of Nature and Art?
Alas, ultimately your fate is your own decision
Remain as you are - or cross the Rubicon!

[* loincloths]


Has Manser been successful?

From a public awareness point of view he has certainly directed considerable media attention to the plight of the Penan and other tribal groups.

But he failed at his major objective: getting the Malaysian government to declare a biosphere reserve to protect the Penan and their forest. In an article in the newsletter of the Bruno Manser Fonds, the activist admitted, "success in Sarawak is less than zero."

Chris Elliott, who met Manser several times, agrees that the future isn't bright for the Penan and their forest home. "There is severe pressure from unsustainable logging, forest fires and conversion to plantations," he says.

Manser had a cautious relationship with the conservation mainstream. No doubt he felt that groups like WWF were too soft.

"We differ on the means," Elliott says. "WWF tried to work in partnership with the government and had some success - a few protected areas were established, there was training of staff, and new wildlife legislation was created. But neither Bruno nor WWF succeeded in getting the authorities to create a biosphere reserve, Elliott notes, adding that WWF now has little activity in Sarawak.

Nevertheless, history isn't written by people who follow the rules. Manser sensed a major injustice and challenged the status quo in which his friends the Penan were paternalistically treated as the bottom of the Sarawak social totem pole.

So, how will this Swiss artist turned ecowarrior be judged by history? As an obstinate fighter for a lost cause or a romantic visionary for a victorious change in policy?

What motivated this man from rich Switzerland to live six years in the forest of Borneo with virtually nothing that most people would consider essential? He learned to process food from the starchy sago palm, learned to hunt with a blowpipe, learned how to live a life that was simultaneously ridiculously hard and unimaginably rewarding.

Manser wrote of his epiphany: "It happened in a prison in Lucerne. I was imprisoned there for three months because I had refused to learn how to shoot at human beings. One day I suddenly perceived the space inside the four walls of my cell... how my body acted as a biosphere... to be so small and yet so incredibly rich and important... I flew out of the prison, over to my parents in Basel, to my friends in Amsterdam... I flew on and left our solar system. Then I turned around and flew back. There I sat, back in my body. Since then I carry this certainty in me: everyone of us is nothing and simultaneously the most important creature in its space and place. Indispensable from the first to the last breath...


"So when people say: 'Don't be active, it's just a waste of time, it won't help anyway,' then you already know that they're scared of losing profit and would even sell their own grandmother. Does it have to be the children today who dare say out loud to the politicians and the economists: support what is real and true, avoid what is bad?"

A passage by T.E. Lawrence comes to mind:

All men dream: but not equally.
Those who dream by night in the dusty
recesses of their minds wake in the day
to find that it was vanity;
but the dreamers
of the day are dangerous men,
for they may act their dreams
with open eyes,
to make it possible.

Paul Spencer Sochaczewski © 2001

THE PENAN: True Sons & Daughters of Mother Earth

[First posted 4 November 2008. Reposted 25 August 2017]

I take my hat off to Global Witness for pulling off this amazing feat!

Inside Malaysia's Shadow State

WHAT IS THIS FILM ABOUT?

This investigation provides undercover footage of the corruption and illegality at the heart of governance in Sarawak, Malaysia’s largest state, on the island of Borneo.

For over thirty years, Sarawak has been governed by Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud, who controls all land classification, forestry and plantation licenses in the state. Under his tenure, Sarawak has experienced some of the most intense rates of logging seen anywhere in the world. The state now has less than 5 per cent of its forests left in a pristine condition, unaffected by logging or plantations and continues to export more tropical logs than South America and Africa combined.

The film reveals for the first time the instruments used by the ruling Taib family and their local lawyers to skirt Malaysia’s laws and taxes, creaming off huge profits at the expense of indigenous people and hiding their dirty money in Singapore. Taib and the local lawyers we approached denied Global Witness’s allegations of corruption. A summary of their responses are included at the end of the film.

HOW DOES CORRUPTION AFFECT SARAWAK’S PEOPLE?

Corruption is destroying the fabric of Sarawak’s society and squandering the state’s natural resources. The region’s indigenous people have born the brunt of this. Ancestral land to which they have claims has been routinely licensed for logging and plantations, badly damaging their livelihoods and violating their rights under Sarawak and Malaysian law. This has trapped many communities in a cycle of poverty and dependency.

Moreover, corruption affects the future well-being of all Malaysian citizens. This investigation demonstrates how money that should be driving development is being lost to corruption and hidden in secrecy jurisdictions overseas. Malaysia is thought to be the world’s third largest source of such illicit financial flows, losing the country an estimated US$285 billion (RM863 billion), or over US$43,000 (RM130,000) perhousehold between 2001 and 2010. This is money that could have been spent on improving key services and quality of life for ordinary Malaysians.

IS THIS A WIDER PROBLEM THAN SARAWAK?

The timber rush which occurred during Taib’s three decades in office has spawned some of the world’s largest logging companies. These companies have had a catastrophic effect on forests and indigenous communities in almost every major tropical forested region in the world, and are regularly implicated in major illegal logging scandals.

Global Witness’ analysis shows that Sarawak’s logging companies are currently logging or converting forests to plantations in at least 12 countries. Their operations cover an area of 18 million hectares worldwide, an area roughly three times the landmass of Norway.

Thank you, Global Witness!

Sarawak natives resist Taib Mahmud's voracious deforestation and dam building projects

Sarawak Energy's desperate prayers for an unnecessary dam

Norwegian Sarawak Energy CEO Torstein Dale Sjotveit and Sarawak government representatives were faced with resistance when they tried to hold a traditional prayer ritual at the site of the planned Baram dam which would flood over 400km2 of rainforest and displace 20,000 people.

For more information visit http://www.stop-corruption-dams.org

Bruno Manser, the Ghost That Walks in Sarawak...

Bruno Manser, a real-life Toruk Makto
to the endangered Penan tribe

Well-connected friends in Sarawak whisper that a massive bounty was placed on Bruno Manser's head more than 12 years ago. The money was put up by several logging companies linked to Chief Minister Taib Mahmud who hated Manser's guts. Some say the reward for Manser's head was at least RM1 million.

Bruno has been missing since May 2000, the last time anyone heard from the larger-than-life Swiss artist who transformed himself into a Rambo against the destruction of Borneo's precious rainforests and inspired the Penan to resist the systematic ethnocide perpetrated against them by Taib's corrupt regime.

The valiant spirit of Bruno Manser lives on as the foundation he inaugurated in Switzerland to continue his important mission. I salute this wholly admirable hero who dedicated his life to battling a voracious and vampiric political and corporate dynasty hellbent on destroying an entire ancient ecosystem.

Thanks to the Bruno Manser Foundation, the world can see what is actually happening behind the tight security surrounding the accursed Bakun Dam - demented brainchild of Daim Zainuddin and Mahathir Mohamad...

Members of the Ukit tribe forced to live in floating houses as the waters rise

They were offered a barren resetttlement site and because they refused to budge,
received no compensation

Hanging on to a bleak existence, battling against despair

Thousands of drowned trees along the periphery of the man-made lake

Apart from the trees, how many other magnificent lifeforms have been killed by Bakun Dam?

Yet another ill-conceived, wasteful and unnecessary mega-project from BN

READ THE FULL TRAGIC STORY HERE.

"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).

Vampire Slayers attempt to stop the Rape of Sarawak

Old school robber barons Najib Razak & Taib Mahmud

My heartfelt gratitude and utmost admiration goes to Clare Rewcastle Brown (Sarawak Report), Peter John Jaban (Radio Free Sarawak), Lukas Straumann and the Bruno Manser Fonds for their unrelenting efforts towards tracking down Taib Mahmud's vampiric financial empire spread across many continents.

Head of a Vampire Dynasty

As chief minister of Sarawak since 1981, Taib Mahmud has had ample time to rape, pillage and plunder the 130 million year old Borneo rainforest - and, in the process, threaten with extinction the last remaining indigenous nomadic tribe of Sarawak, the Penan.

The politics of corruption in Malaysia as practised by Barisan Nasional makes Taib Mahmud immune to all allegations against him and his family mafia, no matter how strong the evidence. Environmental and human rights activists attempting to stop the carnage are quickly targeted by Taib's secret police - and invariably turned back on arrival at the airport - or (if they are Sarawakians) forced into exile to avoid imprisonment, and perhaps even untimely death.

Bruno Manser, 11 years after his
disappearance in Sarawak, remains
a thorn in Taib Mahmud's side

The Bruno Manser Fonds was named in honor of a courageous Swiss artist who spent many years living with the Penan and became an honorary member of the tribe. He was a huge thorn in the side of Taib Mahmud's avaricious schemes, and when he abruptly disappeared sometime in May 2000, the rumor mill was rife with reports that a lucrative bounty had been put on his head by logging companies backed by the chief minister.

Bruno Manser: Tribute to an Ecowarrior
Update on the Penan blockade in Ulu Baram
EU delegation visits Penan blockade area without meeting the Penan

When will BN stop raping Sarawak?

This was posted 28 January 2009. On the eve of the Sarawak elections, I dedicate this reposting to the beautiful, free peoples of Sarawak. To the victory of the people!More landslide losses for UMNO ahead? (Pic courtesy of Michael Chick)

LOGGING OPERATIONS CAUSE DEADLY LANDSLIDES

Tony Thien | Jan 28, 09 11:11am

The landslide in Upper Limbang in northern Sarawak that caused the death of three people and injured seven others is a direct consequence of destructive logging practices, according a Swiss-based NGO, Bruno Manser Fund (BMF).

The landslide is the third in just over a week in Sarawak. On January 16, a landslide killed two workers at a petrol station near the city of Miri in northern Sarawak.

Last Wednesday, a landslide severed a section of the Pan-Borneo trunk road near Bintulu, causing hundreds of vehicles to be stranded for hours.

The most recent incident involving three people killed and seven others injured occurred at a timber camp in the Upper Limbang region of Sarawak, BMF said in a statement to Malaysiakini today.

It quoted Bernama as saying the dead were identified as two Filipinos and a Malaysian who worked for a local timber company.

“Research by the Bruno Manser Fund (BMF) has shown that the landslide took place near Long Sebayang on the upper reaches of the Limbang river,” BMF said.


Logging in the area, which is claimed by the local Penan and Kelabit communities, has been controversial since the mid-1980s when locals set up a number of blockades on logging roads to prevent the timber companies from encroaching into their rainforests, it added.

The Bruno Manser Fund said logging interests in the area used to be closely linked to James Wong, Sarawak's former minister of the environment.


It added: “Logging operations near Long Sebayang are currently being carried out by Lee Ling Timber, a company with its headquarters in Limbang.”

Further upriver, a second company, Samling, extracts timber on a large scale. Both companies have plans to convert large natural forest areas into tree plantations, which is likely to cause further environmental destruction.

[Images courtesy of Bruno Manser Fonds, Malaysiakini & Michael Chick]

BRUNO MANSER: Tribute to an Ecowarrior

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

LONG LIVE THE PENAN!

Penan sue Malaysian authorities over logging, plantations

MIRI, SARAWAK, 10 Dec 2009 - Five indigenous Penan communities of the East Malaysian state of Sarawak on Borneo are suing the Sarawak state government and three licensees of timber and planted-forest concessions at the High Court of Sarawak and Sabah.

The new land rights' litigation affects forestry operations by the three Malaysian timber conglomerates of Samling, Interhill and Timberplus in concessions issued to Damai Cove Resorts, Samling Plywood, Samling Reforestation and Timberplus.

View of Long Item in the Baram region

The Penan are demanding land titles for an area of 80,000 hectares, the nullification of the four unlawfully issued timber and planted-forest licences and also compensation for damage done by the logging companies in the course of their past operations. In particular, the Penan are asking the court to issue a mandatory injunction against the licensees, plus their contractors and subcontractors, for the removal of all structures, equipment and machinery from the plaintiffs' native customary rights land.

CLICK ON MAP TO ENLARGE

In support of their case, the Penan plaintiffs have provided ample proof of the fact that they and their ancestors have been using their claimed rainforests since time immemorial. The formerly nomadic Penan hunted and gathered food from the rainforest and lived on sago (uvut) in the area until the 1950s, when they decided to settle at their present village locations. The Penan have a history of barter trade in jungle products, such as nyateng (resin for producing fire), kapon (latex from kapon trees) and handicraft items, with traders who have been coming to their villages since the early twentieth century.

Sarawak government's conduct "oppressive, arbitrary, illegal and unconstitutional"

The Penan plaintiffs state that, for over ten years, various logging operators have wrongfully trespassed onto their ancestral land with bulldozers, excavators, shovels, trucks and lorries and have destroyed a substantial area of their forest, fruit trees, crops and cultural heritage, such as graves and historical sites. They object to the Sarawak government's issue of timber and planted-forest licences, which the plaintiffs consider to be "oppressive, arbitrary, illegal and unconstitutional".

In September 2009, a Malaysian government report confirmed allegations by the Penan of the middle Baram region that a number of indigenous girls and women had been sexually abused and raped by logging company employees. An independent review of logging operations in the region commissioned by the French Accor group had uncovered numerous offences committed by Interhill against the Sarawak forestry legislation.

The litigation is divided over two court cases that have been filed by ten Penan leaders of Ba Abang, Long Item, Long Kawi, Long Lilim and Long Pakan in Sarawak's Middle Baram region.

[Pada Jutang, headman of Long Pakan (L) and Panai Irang, headman of Ba Abang]

Both cases are based on detailed community maps and oral history documentation that have been compiled with the assistance of the Bruno Manser Fund. The cases are being handled by the renowned law office of Messrs. Baru Bian in Kuching. Baru Bian has recently been appointed the Sarawak leader of the People's Justice Party, PKR.

For more info, maps and high resolution photographs, please contact: Bruno Manser Fund
Socinstrasse 37,
4051 Basel
Switzerland

Email: info@bmf.ch
Tel. +41 61 261 94 74