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]

Why Robber Barons Love Building Dams... (repost)

The accursed Bakun Dam (brainchild of Mahathir and Daim) is doomed to fail.

Imagine we’re gathered in some holy place. An architectural wonder. Like St Paul’s Cathedral in Rome or the St Sophia Mosque in Instanbul. Or perhaps the Gateway of the Sun in Peru or the Giza Pyramid Complex in Egypt. And we’re here to knock this whole place down and build a megamall right here because it would make better economic sense.

Let's have Wal-Mart and McDonald's at this popular tourist location.

Imagine the tremendous outcry against such an outrage. We’re talking about demolishing a cultural and spiritual artifact – a monument to a whole religious tradition. We’re talking about trading in our prophets for profits. Absolutely unthinkable, right?

Now: imagine you’re living in a small house you built yourself, beside a clear stream in a beautiful, forested river valley. Your ancestors have lived here for a hundred generations. According to your folklore, the landscape is the living flesh of divine progenitors whose essence condensed to form familiar features - like the mountains, the rivers, the rocks and the trees - and who are integral aspects of a Great Spirit inhabiting all forms, a unity in astonishing diversity. To you, the fact that the land is sacred – endowed with meaning, significance, and intrinsic spiritual value – is so obvious, no one needs to put it into words.

Imagine we’re here to log this magnificent forest, blow up the hills, dig up the rocks, turn a green sanctuary into a giant construction site, seriously pollute the water basin, cause massive erosion in a water catchment area, and dam up one of the few remaining free-flowing rivers in the country. Why? Because economic growth demands greater water consumption - and water supply is a growth industry. And because we have been grossly insensitive in the way we use and manage our water resources.

Sungai Luit by Doreen Ong

A CLASH OF PERSPECTIVES

We are born into cultural perspectives that become imperceptible to us - until we find ourselves outside of them. Like fish that never wonder what water is, we grow up with assumptions about reality we rarely question. For instance, we rarely question the need for governments... or armies... or landlords... or caste systems (whether hereditary or monetary).

When we hear the word “development” we assume we know what it means. We experience the flow of time as linear, just as the world looks flat to a lowlander. When conversing with people from a different cultural and linguistic background, we assume they aren’t as clever as ourselves – because they’re not very fluent in our language.

When urbanites encounter country folk, they unconsciously assume an air of superiority. Surely our sophisticated way of life is far better than theirs! Surely they’re better off becoming more like us (no way they could ever become just like us, of course, since we have too far a headstart on them!)

Civilization creates art, it’s true, but art creates artifice and artificiality. Industrial man sees the wilderness as a vast resource that can be converted into private wealth. Recklessly, ruthlessly, we go about building our national aspirations by tearing down our natural heritage.

Morally, this is no different than a cannibal eyeing an infant as a delicious and convenient source of protein. The wilderness, like a baby, has only beauty and innocence as its defences. When Darwinian notions of “survival of the fittest” form the basis of modern society, the total extermination of entire species becomes justified in terms of Them or Us.

CONVERT OR DESTROY THE SAVAGES!

Unfortunately, some of us don’t truly appreciate anything until it’s gone forever. Hardwoods can be converted into hard cash. Ignorant savages can be converted into consumers, taxpayers, mindless believers, obedient slaves of the System.

Filthy heathens have no souls and feel no pain - unlike us civilized God-fearing folks.

Some of us have tried to warn the others about the folly of such shortsighted behavior – and the dangerous consequences lurking ahead. For the most part we have been ignored.

The Earth fights back by getting feverish. When her flesh is torn apart by man’s rapacious machines, she shudders and quakes and sweats profusely, releasing a deluge of mysterious plagues upon us.

The Earth coughs and we realize we're living on the back of a gigantic whale.

At the fountain of knowledge, we drank too thirstily, only to become drunk with a false sense of power. We thought we could manipulate the masses with fear and greed. But the fear and greed enslaved us instead. Now we find ourselves powerless to alter our destructive course. We’re on the fast track and can’t stop the mindless runaway train of economic growth. Our materialistic definition of growth has limited us to the physical world, and excluded us from the limitless realm of the metaphysical. This growth has now taken on the form of a cancer that is about to kill us all – unless we redirect our attention to growth in mental and spiritual terms.

Cash crops bring fast bucks - and fast bucks is what drives "progress."

For a start, we can apologize for the hideous damage we have inflicted on the wilderness and indigenous ways of life. Then we could focus our efforts on helping the wounds heal. Only in a quest for renewed wholeness can we find our collective way home. And only through the heart can we know the universal love that redeems tragedy and transforms it into a higher truth.

Damnation is the fate of those who would turn the Earth into a living hell where everything is measured in terms of buy and sell. Our salvation can only come from regaining our lost innocence and restoring the beauty of our wildernesses.


We don’t really have a choice: win-win or lose-lose are the only options left.

[Written in June 2001 in response to the Selangor Dam project; but still topical in view of all the destructive dams currently under construction, or under consideration. First posted 3 November 2009, reposted 30 June 2014 & 30 May 2019]

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]

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]

Taib Mahmud, the robber baron extraordinaire, must go!

It has become our moral duty to bring down Taib Mahmud and his ilk.

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!

Reposting from Malaysiakini in support of the Penans...

Baru Bian SOS to Suhakam on behalf of Penans

Dukau Papau 3:23PM Oct 5, 2012

Sarawak Parti Keadilan Rakyat today urged Suhakam to probe human rights abuses against the Penan community in Murum committed by the state headed by the nation's reportedly richest man.

"The latest exposes carried in the alternative media and in some mainstream press in the past few days bring home to us the heights of heartlessness and hypocrisy this government has reached.

"The revelations tell of the unimaginable suffering of the Penans in Murum who have been treated in the most callous and contemptible manner by the dam-building bullies and the uncaring government headed by the man reputed to be the richest man in Malaysia," said Baru Bian,(right) chairman of Sarawak PKR.

Bian, who is also the state assemblyman for Ba'Kelalan, was commenting on the blockade mounted by the Penans to prevent workers from the Sarawak Energy Berhad and other companies from entering the Murum dam construction site, an action provoked by the state's failure to honour its promises.

Blockade enters 10th day

Bian said that they had been left with no choice but to put up the blockade to attract the authorities attention and civil society.

He added that the Penan of Murum need the support of every Malaysian citizen who cares about justice and humanity.

The details revealed in the leaked ‘Resettlement Action Plan' tell the shocking truth about the lives of the Penan and their total neglect by the government that "plans to wipe out the land which has been their home and provided their livelihood for generations,",he said.

"Assistance from the government is important but it has not been regular and in some cases, zero assistance given; they receive an average income of only RM154 per family per month, well below the official rural poverty line index of RM830 per month.

"They begged for teachers for years but none was sent; less than 10% have access to education," he said.

Bian  also said that women and babies still die in childbirth for lack of medical support and no doctors, among other woes.

They had depended on the jungle for traditional medicine but logging had destroyed the herbs and since they have no identity cards they are without official status which means no access to poverty eradication programmes.

The PKR leader said: "Added to the Penan's litany of woes is the insult of James Masing (Land Development Minister) who claims that they are hostile because they lack understanding, and that they were not against the project per se but were unhappy about some of the things implemented without being properly informed.

"What is there to understand about the shameful way they have been treated?

"How would anyone of us like it if our house is destroyed, our bank accounts taken from us and our source of support obliterated from the face of the earth?

"Can we bear to watch our families suffer the indignities of poverty and the humiliation of hunger and hopelessness?

"Please do not be so blasé about the problems faced by the Penans by waving them off as a problem of communications, and pointing the finger at NGOs for instigating them.

"If anything, the NGOs should be commended for helping them to articulate their troubles as the government has preferred not to extend educational facilities to them to help uplift their lives or to help them in any other way," he said.

He said that as for Liwan Lagang, Assistant Minister of Culture and Heritage sent in to ‘explain' matters, the people would like to see what he hopes to achieve at this stage of development.

"I hope YB Liwan would be a real mediator between his people and the government of the day and be very neutral in this issue.

"The truth must be known and exposed to ensure a permanent solution," he said.

Bian added that the total and blatant disregard of Penan rights throw up again the hypocrisy of the government and their all too familiar form over substance hallmark.

He then called upon Malaysians to support the Penan cause by responding generously to the appeal for funds as they lack in every basic necessity and are enduring hardship at the blockade site.

"It is obvious that nobody in this current government has the will or the desire or the moral courage to do what is right," he said.
He pointed out that the people are now recognizing that this government has far overstepped the boundaries of decency and "descended into the den of dam-mad depravity".

"A change of government is the only answer to the insanity that has beset this country," he added.

[My apologies to Malaysiakini for reproducing the entire story here so that those without subscriptions can access this report, which causes me intense distress.]