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

Bruno Manser did not die in vain...

Bruno Manser, before he mysteriously vanished in Sarawak, believed to be murdered...

PRESS STATEMENT FROM THE BRUNO MANSER FUND

Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear friends,

The Bruno Manser Fund's "Stop Corruption Dams" campaign has achieved a major victory today as mining giant Rio Tinto PLC has announced it will scrap plans for a US$2 billion aluminium smelter project in the Malaysian state of Sarawak. According to Dow Jones Newswires, Rio Tinto decided to scrap the controversial smelter plans as negotiations with the Taib family-controlled Cahya Mata Sarawak and the Taib-controlled Sarawak Energy Bhd failed to bear results. Jacynthe Cote, chief executive of Rio Tinto Alcan's aluminium division said "agreement on a long term competitive power supply contract couldn't be reached" with the Taib family businesses.

Rio Tinto's announcement is a major blow for the Sarawak state government under Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud who consistently used the aluminium smelter to promote the recently completed 2'400 MW Bakun dam, Asia's largest dam outside China. As a result, the Bakun dam will cause a massive power glut in Sarawak whose costs will have to be born by Sarawak consumers, tax payers and Malaysia's pension fund EPF who funded the mega-project with massive loans. Plans to export Bakun's excess power to West Malaysia had to be scrapped for economic reasons.

The accursed Bakun Dam has been plagued with problems since its early inception.

The Bruno Manser Fund welcomes Rio Tinto's decision to abandon its Sarawak smelter plans as a major victory for the international campaign to preserve the natural environment and the livelihoods of Sarawak's indigenous peoples.

Rio Tinto's decision proves that the Taib government's irresponsible economic policies have completely failed. There is no need to build another twelve dams in the state as envisaged by the Taib government. All these corruption-driven dam plans that would only benefit the Taib family's construction companies must come tho a halt now.

Taib Mahmud: insatiable greed personified

This is the kind of development that you have to expect from a kleptocratic potentate who believes in witchcraft instead of sound economic analysis and blatantly abuses his public office in order to rob his people.

The Bruno Manser Fund is calling on the Sarawak government to immediately halt the ongoing construction works for the Murum dam and to shelve all further dam plans in Sarawak. We are also calling on the Malaysian federal government to explain how the Bakun dam should ever become profitable and how the EPF (Employees Provident Fund) loans to Bakun will be secured.

Your BMF team