Damned Disgrace! |
| Posted: 28 Jun 2014 04:49 AM PDT   Dumped – SEB's basic provisions laid out for the Penan per month You would have thought that if there was one thing that SEB's Torstein Sjotveit and his Tasmanian side-kick Nick Wright (Head of CSR and Resettlement) would have both made sure of, it would be that the Penan communities, who were barged off their lands by the Murum Dam, would have nothing much to complain about. After all, we have had to put up with these two over-paid westerners praising themselves to the heavens about how their destructive dam building was all about making life better for the affected natives and how the warnings of 'ignorant' NGOs across the world were just so much nonsense. Sjotveit even went further and accused concerned environmentalists of 'making a noise' just to raise funds to pay themselves with. What cheek from a Norwegian with a million dollar salary, who has brought in a swathe of his own friends and compatriots into yet more overpaid jobs in the Sarawak state company!  Mr Wright the SEB Vice President in charge of 'Resettlement' and Corporate and Social Responsibility and Communications! Sure enough, in the last few days we have seen condemnation from Malaysia's own official human rights commissioner over the plight of the resettled Penan and we have seen the local assemblyman forced to scramble to head off angry police reports by the natives against SEB for cheating them of even enough to eat. Mr Wright turned out to be Mr Wrong The Penan communities comprise just a few hundred families: SEB has raised billions of ringgit in public borrowings to pay for its dam building activities. The 'compensation' settlement forced on these communities, in exchange for the rape of their immensely valuable forest heritage, was a paltry RM800 a month per family per month (below even the Sarawak minimum wage). It should not have been hard to live up to the miserable commitment to at least feed these communities. SEB had committed to allow each family a derisory RM250 in cash and to provide food provisions worth RM650 (to make up the RM800). And yet, almost year on, SEB has not even managed to deliver on this mean promise.  Shove them some boxes of dry stuff someone….. a food lorry being prepared for the Penan. The Penan have been left hungry and stranded in their isolated communities, far from their remaining hunting grounds and with inadequate calories coming up the road from SEB. As for the talk of adequate electricity, running water, proper schooling provision and all the other amenities of 'modern living' made by Sjotveit – forget it, there have been nothing but problems over these basic services, even though the dam took years to build – years during which these issues could have been worked out properly. Nick Wright from Tasmania was being paid a fortune to get these things right, but he got them wrong. So, was this Sarawak Energy and their boss Taib Mahmud's game plan all along? Is their whole purpose, in fact, to flush these remaining 'primitive jungle creatures' into the shanty areas of the urban coastal towns and to eventually merge then into their brave new 'industrialised' world? Or, did they just want them dead? The police report placed by the Penan was reported, to its credit, by the local press:
In fact there have been numerous reports and complaints emanating from Metalung and Tegulang over the past weeks and months about inadequate supplies to the villages.  Our 'lessons in food production' – trumpeted PR by SEB…… The running water is not accessible, the electricity supply intermittent and only for a few hours each day and the appalling road access into these isolated settlements has made getting to school (a distance away) and all other forms of travel extremely difficult…. for those few people who do have access to transport. You don't get far on RM250 a month! Yet SEB have done nothing. The situation has been allowed to drift until, at last, the Penan put in their police report and the local Assemblyman Liwan Lagang was been forced to take some action to attempt to mollify the community by taking the food supplies out of SEB's hands. How have Sjotveit and Wright managed to sleep in their beds at night knowing how these communities were being short-changed and going hungry?  More pics of me with the lucky kids whose future I created – Torstein's endless PR turned out to be meaningless What if it had been their own wives and children stranded in the middle of nowhere waiting for tardy vehicles to arrive with rice and oil? How would they like to think of their families being plucked from the lives they knew and put into a barren place, cut off from the world, with one bad road and no vehicle to get out anyway? There have been so many excuses, you can take your pick, for the problems that have built up in the Penan resettlement areas. But, all of these problems were utterly predictable and the basic issue was that SEB did not put anything like enough of the money being thrown at its hydro-electric projects towards ensuring the well-being of the people they are pretending to benefit. The hypocrisy has been laid bare. And, as the BN government set about building yet more dams in exactly the same manner as Bakun and Murum (build first, produce the impact assessments afterwards) it cannot be surprised at the growing resistance of the native communities, who have not one reason to trust their motives. Sign up to receive regular updates from Sarawak Report |
| Posted: 27 Jun 2014 03:50 AM PDT   Point of arrest – Natalie is approached by police for 'illegally' protesting against Lynas's controversial plant The on-going arbitrary detention of the Australian Natalie Lowrey has brought a sinister new meaning to Malaysia's top advertising slogan. The jingle was supposed to tempt tourists from across the world with visions of Asian hospitality and friendliness, but now Natalie has experienced the other side of the coin. As the only remaining person still locked up out of the 15 originally arrested for making a peaceful protest outside the Lynas rare earth processing plant, the Australian is facing discrimination by the Malaysian police. Now they are pressing charges against her alone, which could result in a two year prison sentence in a notorious Malaysian jail. For an Australian woman the conditions in such a place will be shockingly unhygienic, as Malaysians themselves fruitlessly complain, and her immune system will not be adapted to cope with the local diseases. Neither will she be prepared for the way certain uniformed Malaysians are ready to treat 'underlings', since she comes from an egalitarian country where even prisoners have rights. [UPDATE - Lowry was released on police bail on Friday night, some hours after the original publication of this article] Natalie's fate and her on-going experiences in a Malaysian jail will certainly bring a new meaning to this slogan "Malaysia truly Asia" to potential visitors, who are being encouraged to consider the country as a relaxing holiday destination where they can expect royal hospitality! Should they arrive safely in the first place (using Malaysia Airlines) they now know they will have to tread carefully and 'not to upset the authorities', because if they do they will be singled out over the local people for prosecution and punishment.  This is the promotional image – how about the reality? Human rights issues in Malaysia In a statement today the human rights group Suaram condemned the instruments being used to keep Natalie in detention where local people have been released. Natalie has been discriminated against because she is a 'foreigner' under new laws which treat the rights of foreigners beneath the rights of local people in contravention of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. She is being prejudiced against, using laws designed to control illegal immigrants in a flagrant abuse of power, according to the NGO. She has also been caught up, of course, in the stringent new laws to prevent any kind of unauthorised assembly or protest in this so-called democratic country:
Well that is enough to put off any visitor to Malaysia, isn't it? Find yourself caught up in a street demonstration, whilst shopping at the local market and that's you gone for two weeks, arrested without charge.  Local Malaysians were justified in questioning why the Australian company decided to locate here rather than their own outback….. In fact, Natalie knew what she was doing when she peacefully joined what ought, in a civilised country, have been classed as a legitimate protest against an Australian-owned factory that is widely suspected of polluting the environment and damaging local human health. Natalie was concerned that her native company had chosen to locate their controversial operation in a country where the forces of law and order don't tolerate public protests like they do back home and where a factory which processes dangerous substances can get its licences to build in less than a month. There are not many foreign visitors to Malaysia who would not sympathise with Natalie's honourable concerns. She was seated when she was arrested, on a rock at the side of the road. Do as you would be done by – why Malaysians flock to Britain and Australia  Police monitoring the Bersih marchers in London – and protecting them from the traffic! In stark contrast with Natalie's prejudiced treatment, large crowds of Malaysians are regularly tolerated conducting their own noisy protests in London and Australia, without so much as a rude word from the local police. They are allowed to go marching through the streets, waving placards and shouting through mega-phones, without anyone being arrested or harassed by the authorities in these host countries. The police attend to make sure nothing gets out of hand and nobody steps into a dangerous place in the road either. But, there has been no intimidation and no arrests. The only harassment such demonstrators have ever received in these host countries around the world have come from their own Malaysian embassies, who regularly threaten their own citizens abroad not to 'go against' the BN government. This is because the right of protest is a human right and Malaysia clearly needs to be reminded that their country too has signed up to the provisions of that basic declaration. So is the true meaning of "Truly Asia" that in Malaysia the authorities do what they like to their visitors and treat them with dangerous and arbitrary lack of concern for their human rights? What has happened to Natalie proves yes. Sliding law and order situation in Malaysia deserves international attention A few days ago the Prime Minister of Malaysia urged his UMNO party members to be 'as brave' as the Isis militants, the terrorist storm troopers currently causing a terrifying break down of law and order in the Middle East. It was a shocking sentiment for Najib Razak to express and a sobering reflection of what is going on in the country, sanctioned from the very top.  Banning the Bible – politically driven judgements are creating discrimination and supporting militancy in a once fairer country The detention of Natalie Lowrey has highlighted the crumbling of the law and order situation in Malaysia still further. A country which formerly had strong institutions to be largely very proud of, in terms of a level headed and orderly police force and justice system, is now a mass of confusion when it comes to basic good governance. This is because the present administration under a faltering BN has unleashed a whole series of competing power-brokers and law enforcers, in the form of religious bigots and 'Malay supremacists', who are attempting to assert their own power structures and Sharia laws over and above the civil courts and institutions. These often self-appointed groups are being secretly financed by BN, who are opportunistically attempting to use them to stir up racism and hatred against political opponents and to thuggishly intimidate the opposition in ways they could not do openly. There is a worrying analogy in Hitler: the likes of Perkasa and ISMA are Najib's Brownshirts. They are secretly being paid to do his dirty work against the parties who won a majority against him at the last election. RM tens of millions paid out to ISMA Sarawak Report has received extremely well-sourced information that the extremist group ISMA has received significant funding of tens of millions of ringgit directly from the Prime Minister's office. Perkasa has already admitted to such government funding and we call on ISMA and the government to confirm or deny our information that ISMA has received millions in the same manner. Indeed, how else would such groups be able to suddenly start globe-trotting and organising themselves outside of a normal working life if they were not being supported in such a way? Malaysia has signed up to the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, but increasingly, as it plunges into confusion and government backed thuggery, these rights for individuals are being ignored and abuses are being sanctioned at the very highest level. Women have been snatched from their wedding ceremonies, bodies from their funerals, children from their mothers, Bibles from their owners – all in the name of religious 'correctness'. And, the treatment of a foreigner Natalie Lowery has now provided just one more prominent example of the injustices that ordinary Malaysians are starting to have to endure on a daily basis, as this insecure and ruthless administration embarks on lashing out at any group or individual that it sees as a threat to its eternal right to govern. Najib Razak could not have advertised the true under-belly of the slogan 'Malaysia Truly Asia" to the world in a more effective way. Sign up to receive regular updates from Sarawak Report |
| The Sarawak Timber Mafia’s Global Menace Posted: 25 Jun 2014 09:55 AM PDT   Rimbunan Hijau timber bound for Australia in Papua New Guinea. Sarawak Report has researched the global reach of Sarawak's timber mafia and we can reveal a web of logging interests that have spread into every remaining tropical timber region of the planet. This extraordinary penetration by Sarawak's top timber companies is the result of the system promoted by the Mahmud regime, which funnelled virtually all the profits from logging an entire country into the hands of just a few companies. The big 6 have been Samling, Rimbunan Hijau, WTK, KTS, Shin Yang and Ta Ann and they have all been intimately linked in business to Taib Mahmud himself and his own family. With the enormous profits made in the 1980′s and 90′s from logging these companies were able to buy their way into other wilderness areas, using the same corrupt methods that served them well in Sarawak. These include ingratiating and bribing local politicians and officials; thuggery against tribal landowners and side-stepping protective legislation against indiscriminate logging. Time and again these and other Sarawak linked enterprises have been accused of such practices from Latin America, through the Congo to the Far East jungles of Kalimantan, Tasmania and Papua New Guinea. Illegal logging – the Sarawak template  Communities protested against a palm oil company in Long Teran Kanan, Sarawak. In Sarawak itself, thousands of indigenous people have lodged police reports, complained to the state government or filed court cases against companies for illegal logging. Most cases have been ignored by the authorities and it is the communities and native rights lawyers who have to battle their case through a slow and reluctant justice system. Now, these very companies are operating in the same way across the globe, greedily grabbing land and oppressing local communities. These Malaysian companies seem to be particularly insensitive to the law, human rights or the environment. Where others might hesitate for the aforesaid reasons, Sarawak's ruthless and experienced timber tyrants are landing like locusts. Rimbunan Hijau, run by the Sibu billionaire and Taib crony Tiong Hiew King (whose brother is a federal MP), have been fined by the Brazilian environment agency for possessing illegally logged wood and investigated by the country's Federal Prosecutor for its role in the illegal log trade. The same company has also been frequently fined for violating environmental regulations in Soukpal, Russia and on the island of Vanuatu and accused of performing the "worst logging seen in any tropical forest" and providing poor workers conditions in the Solomon Islands.  The Solomon Islands – stripped bare by companies like Sarawak's Rimbunan Hijau. Likewise, Samling, run by another billionaire crony of Taib's, Yaw Teck Seng, has been internationally condemned for environmental destruction in regions such as Guyana in South America, Cambodia and Papua New Guinea. In 2012, companies linked to Samling were exposed for grasping nearly a quarter of the largest remaining area of the Liberian rainforest. Their partner in that scandal, which involved abusing a system of local permits for forest dwellers, was Taib's own cousin, Hamed Sepawi, who has his own local record of destruction as the main shareholder of Ta Ann in Sarawak and of numerous other enterprises and oil palm plantations. In January 2013 the Samling/ Sepawi partnership was finally kicked out of Liberia by Presidential decree. The Executive Order, which was announced by President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf stated that:
Samling is closely linked to Sarawak's former Chief Minister and current Governor Abdul Taib Mahmud. Taib's cousin and well known proxy Hamed Sepawi is a major shareholder of Samling as is his Bomoh (witch doctor) Ahmad bin haji Su'ut. Gangster tactics at home and abroad  Minggat Anak Nyakin – beaten and strangled by gangsters in 2012. Sarawak Report suggests that it is time the international community took note of the menace presented by the Sarawak timber mafia, not just in terms of environmental destruction, but to ordinary people who are being affected by violence. Logging companies in Sarawak often employ gangsters to threaten and intimidate indigenous communities who try to resist encroachment on their land. This gangsterism has been able to flourish due to a virtual media blackout on the issue and a refusal by the authorities to act. It is not uncommon for communities to see truck loads of gangsters turn up at their village and threaten them with guns or parangs. In 2012, we covered how Minggat Anak Nyakin and his son Juan Anak Minggat were beaten to within an inch of their lives by gangsters who were teaching them a lesson for protesting against the destruction of their lands by loggers. Last year it was the turn of the dwellers in Melikin, including Surik Anak Muntai, who was beaten up badly and just this week, photographs have emerged of thugs attempting to intimidate indigenous protesters at the Baram dam blockade.  Surik Anak Muntai – beaten up as he picked up his son from school – had led the protest against loggers in Melikin, Sarawak The problem was referred to in Malaysia's Human Rights Commission (SUHAKAM) own report in 2011, which revealed how in Sarawak:
Publication of that report was later suppressed to spare embarrassment. Now, in Papua New Guinea (PNG), logging company WTK has been identified using similar tactics. An Oxfam report published in April of this year, reported that communities in Terubu, East Sepik Province were complaining of bullying by WTK:
Likewise, Sarawak's Rimbunan Hijau are notorious for destroying vast tracks of forest and causing human rights abuses in Malaysia as well as Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Vanuatu, Indonesia, New Zealand and Russia. They dominate the logging industry in Papua New Guinea (PNG) and the company has been accused of hiring police in West Pomio, New Britain Island to intimidate indigenous protesters. These communities say that the police were bankrolled by Rimbunan Hijau and have terrorised indigenous communities:
 Riding into Baram – these thugs were snapped trying to intimidate the local blockaders. Forced Removal  Lina Gawai from Bumbu, PNG stands where her home used to be before Rimbunan Hijau forcibly removed her community. This is another tactic against natives that Sarawak's timber tycoons learnt about first at home. Thousands of indigenous people in Sarawak have been forcibly removed from their native lands to make way for giant hydroelectric dam projects, which ultimately financially benefit Taib Mahmud, his family and cronies. Just this week, SUHAKAM visited indigenous communities who have been resettled in Murum and highlighted the unacceptable conditions that they have been left with. Many natives displaced by the Bakun Dam have built floating homes on the side of the river as they are unhappy with their resettlement conditions. Most communities have complained of unfair compensation packages, or are still waiting for compensation. Likewise, in April of this year, Rimbunan Hijau came under international scrutiny for forcibly removing indigenous communities in Bumbu Settlement in Lae, PNG. These communities are now living in tents after being moved from the land they have been living off for the past 40-50 years. A court case is currently underway against Rimbunan Hijau and PNG Forest Products. According to local organisation ACT NOW, one female villager stated that:
It is certainly an attitude that rings familiar to the rural people of Sarawak. Women and children's rights Despite the Malaysian Government ratifying the UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the Government has failed to address serious human rights concerns related to indigenous women and children in Sarawak.  Penan communities in Sarawak have been complaining for years that their families are being abused by loggers There have long been reports of systematic rape and abuse by loggers against indigenous women in Sarawak, but the Government have refused to take action to protect them or conduct a proper investigation. In a BBC interview in 2009 BN MP James Masing even stated that the Penan are " very good story tellers". Sarawak's logging companies have shown identical lack of concern elsewhere in the world. The 2011 film "Bikpela Bagarap (Big Damage)" by David Fedele uncovered the tragic environmental and social destruction carried out by WTK subsidiaries Vanimo Forest Products and Amanab Forest Limited in Sanduan Province, PNG. WTK own the one supermarket in town, the hotel, gaming machines and the sawmill. They control the shipping and fuel, whilst Rimbunan Hijau own one of the only two national newspapers.  Malaysian loggers accused of using and abusing native women According to the report, many young women are forced into prostituting themselves to the Malaysian loggers to survive and that many cannot afford to send their children to school.
We say that it is time the world woke up to the Sarawak logging menace and the huge capital base that has propelled it into these communities. Even the forests of Australia, the wilderness of Tasmania have proved easy prey for the familiar tactics of the clear cutting Malaysians. Hamed Sepawi, Taib's cousin and business proxy, has ingratiated his way into the political life of the state and caused outrage through a series of questionable deals that have permitted his company Ta Ann to destroy huge areas of forest marked for protection. The game is corruption and the consequences of greed are always ugly. Sign up to receive regular updates from Sarawak Report |
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