MEDIA RELEASE
BRUNO MANSER FUND, BASEL / SWITZERLAND
Basel, 24 February 2009
Interhill surveyors approach Long Item
Penan village alerts international community: We need urgent assistance to protect our last remaining forest reserve
Surveyors of Interhill Logging are approaching Long Item, a Penan village in the Middle Baram region of Sarawak, in order to prepare the community’s last forest reserve for logging, the Bruno Manser Fonds learned today. The Penan villagers are asking the international community for urgent support.
“Our biggest wish is that Interhill will stop entering our community forest”, headman Balan John of Long Item said. “We need urgent assistance from outside to stop the loggers from destroying our livelihood.” According to the villagers, Interhill already destroyed fruit trees, poison dart trees and had dumped toxic waste in the village’s drinking water supply. In July 2008, the community denounced the destruction of a gravesite by Interhill workers.
Interhill has been logging a timber concession of 55′000 hectares of tropical rainforest in Sarawak’s Middle Baram region since the 1980s. Currently, the Malaysian timber company is reinvesting its profits in a 388-room hotel project, the Novotel Interhill Kuching, which will be managed by the French ACCOR Group.
The Bruno Manser Fund is demanding the withdrawal of ACCOR from its controversial cooperation with Interhill.
Please contact us for further information:
Bruno Manser Fund
Socinstrasse 37, CH – 4051 Basel
info@bmf.ch, www.bmf.ch
www.stop-interhill.com
Support the Penan and sign the online petition: www.stop-interhill.com
French ACCOR group must stop cooperating with Malaysian loggers
from Bruno Manser Fonds
BMF launches new campaign against Interhill Logging and demands the French hotel group’s withdrawal from the controversial NOVOTEL INTERHILL project
Europe’s leading hotel group, ACCOR, ought to withdraw from the controversial NOVOTEL INTERHILL hotel project in Sarawak (Malaysia). This is what the Bruno Manser Fund (BMF) is demanding in a letter to ACCOR CEO, Gilles Pélisson, published today. According to the ACCOR plans, the 4.5-star hotel in the Sarawak capital of Kuching, which is currently under construction, will offer 388 hotel rooms over a total of 23 stories. It is being implemented jointly with the Malaysian tropical timber company, Interhill.
“Interhill has been logging Sarawak’s tropical rainforest since the end of the 1980s and bears decisive responsibility for the ongoing destruction of the very basis of the Penan’s existence”, said Lukas Straumann, Director of the Bruno Manser Fund. “We are shocked by ACCOR’s cooperation with Interhill, since it is completely at odds with ACCOR’s ecological and social standards.”
The Bruno Manser Fund states that the Penan have been protesting against the Interhill logging company since the end of the 1980s by setting up blockades on logging roads. Interhill is operating with a timber concession for 55′000 hectares of tropical forest. According to Penan sources, Interhill has had the Penan intimidated by armed thugs on various occasions for purposes of asserting its interests vis-à-vis the local communities. The Malaysian police are currently investigating alleged cases of sexual abuse of Penan women by Interhill workers in Sarawak’s Middle Baram region.
With 150,000 employees and annual sales of EUR 7.7 billion (2008), ACCOR is Europe’s leading hotel provider. The membership of the ACCOR Board of Directors also includes a former top politician from Germany, namely the one-time Finance Minister, Theo Waigel. ACCOR operates more than 4000 hotels worldwide, including 47 hotels in Switzerland.
Help the Penan save the rainforest, sign the online petition!
from Bruno Manser Fonds
Dear friends,
today, the Bruno Manser Fonds (BMF) has started a new campaign against the Malaysian Interhill group. For over twenty years, Interhill has been logging tropical rainforests in Sarawak’s Middle Baram region (East Malaysia/Borneo) with devastating environmental and social consequences. The affected Penan communities are currently struggling to protect their last forest reserves against Interhill’s bulldozers.
As a part of this campaign, an online petition has been launched which asks the French ACCOR group to stop its cooperation with Interhill. ACCOR has been accorded a management contract for the planned Novotel Interhill hotel project in Kuching/Sarawak, in which Interhill is reinvesting the profits obtained from loigging the Penan’s forests.
Please sign BMF’s online petition on www.stop-interhill.com and forward this message to your friends.
Thank you very much!
Your BMF campaign team
From The Star Online
By Stephen Then, 21 February 2009
MIRI: The Malaysian Human Rights Commission (Suhakam) has sent a protest note to the state and federal police over the detention of three villagers, including a nursing mother, under the Emergency Ordinance.
Suhakam Commissioner for Sarawak Dr Mohd Hirman Ritom said: ”Our stand is that the use of the Emergency Ordinance by the police in this case is unjustified.”
”Do these people pose such a threat to society that they must be held without trial?
”Why is it that they cannot be brought to court and charged under the Penal Code?”
Dr Hirman told The Star yesterday that commission members held a full-board meeting on the latest development involving the arrest of villagers Bunya Sengok, 21, Marai Sengok and his wife Melati Bekeni, both 28, at the Bintulu police station.
The trio were arrested and held under the ordinance for 60 days from Jan 15.
Sarawak CID director Senior Asst Comm II Huzir Mohamed said the two men were suspected of being involved in a series of robberies while Melati was said to have harboured them and had kept stolen property.
However, Sengok’s family claimed that the trio were arrested because their family was involved in a heated dispute with a development consortium over a project on a plot of land they claimed was their native ancestral land.
Melati is still nursing her 18-month-old daughter. She also has a three-year-old son.
Dr Hirman said the Suhakam commissioners did not dwell on the alleged land disputes, but on the reasons given by the police on the detention.
from The Star Online
February 22 2009
MIRI: The Bakun hydro-electric dam catchment area has been overlogged by more than 40,000ha, an environmental group said.
Sahabat Alam Malaysia (SAM) said the original catchment area for the Bakun project in central Sarawak, as stipulated in the first environmental impact assessment report, was supposed to be 64,000ha.
However, more than 100,000ha have already been logged, said SAM field officer for Sarawak Jok Jau Evong, adding that ground studies in Bakun showed that forests outside the original catchment area had been subjected to intensive logging.
“It seems that the logging is being carried out all the way from Bakun to the forested areas earmarked for clearing under the proposed Murum Dam project.
“A large portion of the forest within the Murum Dam area has already been logged,” he told The Star yesterday.
He said the whole area from Bakun to Murum would eventually be cleared of all timber.
“SAM is worried that the ecosystem will suffer even greater damage because of the massive land clearing,” he said.
Evong was commenting on Assistant State Environment and Public Health Minister Dr Abang Rauf Abang Zen’s statement that tonnes of fish in Bakun had died recently due to excessive siltation in the Bakun catchment area.
He said this practice had caused serious siltation in the river systems in Bakun and had contributed to the suffocation of a large number of fishes.
Under Sarawak’s Natural Resources and Environment Board laws, any land development project measuring 500ha and above must be subjected to EIA scrutiny and approval.
Evong said the authorities must monitor all land development projects regardless of the size because all of them contribute to destruction of the environment, riverine resources and wildlife.
Dr Rauf, when asked yesterday how big an area had been logged in the Bakun catchment region, replied that he did not have the exact figure.
MEDIA RELEASE : BRUNO MANSER FONDS, BASEL / SWITZERLAND
17 February 2009
Unprecedented devastation caused by floods appears to be a consequence of logging and changed local climate patterns
Rural communities in the East Malaysian state of Sarawak are facing bleak days ahead as the recent floods have destroyed their padi fields shortly before harvest time. According to a report in The Borneo Post on 11 February 2009, indigenous communities from a number of longhouses in the Baram river region have lost almost their complete harvest.
“Only a couple of farmers who cultivated hill padi this year have survived the devastation”, a farmer from Long Ikan, one of the worst hit longhouses, said to The Borneo Post. “The rest of us saw our crops destroyed before our very eyes”. It is expected that the harvest losses will make a number of communities dependent on government aid.
While local politicians blame changing climate patterns for the floods, the overlogging of the rainforests appears to be a significant reason for the unprecedented devastation caused by the floods. Despite warnings from environmentalists and international scientists, less than ten percent of Sarawak’s primary forests have been spared from logging.
For over two decades, forestry policies under Sarawak’s Chief Minister, Taib Mahmud, have favoured the short-sighted depletion of the fragile tropical rainforest ecosystems without due importance being attached to the long-term environmental, social and economic consequences of logging.
Meanwhile, fish in Sarawak’s rivers are dying from siltation of the rivers, another consequence of the logging. Police officers from the Belaga district found hundreds of dead fish floating on the Rajang River. According to Sarawak’s Natural Resources and Environment Board controller, Dr. Penguang Manggil, the gills of the fish were found to be blocked by silt, and they are believed to have suffocated.
Penguang said the erosion of the rivers was caused by human activities upstream and he agreed that it would have long term consequences on the rivers as well as on the aquatic life. “We would like to call on everyone to ensure that whatever we do, it will have minimal impact on the rivers”, the state government official said to The Borneo Post.
from The Star online
by Stephen Then, 17 February 2009
MIRI: The detention of three Iban family members from the Bintulu Division in northern Sarawak has been brought to international limelight over the alleged violation of their right to a fair trial.
Their detention under the Emergency Ordinance (EO) was already a controversy – police maintain the arrest of the Rumah Sengok family members was for several robberies but the family says it involved a dispute with a development consortium over alleged ancestral land.
The three were picked up with four others on Dec 26 under the Penal Code for armed robbery.
On Jan 14, the four got police bail but a 60-day detention order under the EO was slapped on Bunya anak Sengok, 21, his brother Marai, 28, and Marai’s wife Melati anak Bekeni, 28, the next day.
Suhakam and Sahabat Alam Malaysia (SAM) are involved in the case following appeals from Sengok’s family.
The Sarawak police is under pressure to explain why the three have not been officially charged.
Add to the pressure is the fact that Melati is still nursing her 18-month-old daughter.
When contacted yesterday, State CID chief Senior Asst Comm (II) Huzir Mohamad said: “This case has nothing to do with any land dispute.
“The two men (Bunya and Marai) are suspected of being involved in a number of robberies in Bintulu.
“The woman (Melati) is suspected of having given protection to them and keeping stolen property.
“Suhakam said we had misused our powers but I personally met with their commissioners and explained what was happening,” he said.
He added that the Bintulu police station was allowing Melati to be with her baby, and to nurse her in a special room.
SAC Huzir gave an assurance that Melati, who also has a three-year-old son, would always be allowed to meet her children.
He added the next course of action would depend on directives from the Home Ministry.
The Penang-based SAM made an international appeal on Feb 11, alleging possible violation of their right to a fair trial.
Prior to that, SAM had written to the Sarawak Attorney General, the Inspector General of Police, Sarawak police chief and Suhakam to speed up investigations and charge them if there was evidence, or free them.
From Friends Of The Earth Malaysia (Sahabat Alam Malaysia)
Dear Friend,
Friends of the Earth Malaysia is calling on you to speak out in support of six indigenous Malaysians who were arrested and held without charge by the Malaysian police in Bintulu, Sarawak last December.
The two women and four men all come from Iban families that have regularly defended their land from plantation and logging companies.
Three of the six continue to be detained under an unjust Malaysian law that says they can be held for up to 60 days without trail.
The prisoners are being held without substantiated evidence against them and continue to be denied certain human rights. One of the women is a breastfeeding mother that was not allowed to see her daughter for over a week until Friends of the Earth Malaysia appealed to the Malaysian Human Rights Commission.
We cannot let these innocent Malaysians suffer any longer without a fair trail. Please lend your support and demand the immediate release of the Sarawak three.
Take action now!
http://www.foei.org/en/get-involved/take-action/release-the-sarawak-three
by Tony Thien, 03 Feb 2009
from Malaysiakini.com
The Dayak community wants the Sarawak government and its chief minister Abdul Taib Mahmud to end “injustices” against them.
A day-long symposium held in Sibu over the weekend saw attention being refocused on long-held grievances, particularly in the state’s land policies.
About 150 Dayak professionals from the Iban, Bidayuh and Orang Ulu communities agreed that state policies “by design or otherwise will result in Dayaks gradually and eventually to be dispossessed” of native customary rights (NCR) lands.
In particular, they referred to the policy to freeze the survey of NCR land and issuance of native titles, as well as amendment of the Sarawak Land Code to place the burden of proving customary rights on landowners.
Organised by an independent group led by a former judge Augustine Liom, the symposium concluded that the extinguishment of NCR lands without adequate and proper notice is “unfair and unjust”.
Two of the resolutions chided the state government for:
not giving recognition and respect to Dayak customs and traditions relating to land rights and land use; and
increasing the issuance of leases involving large tracts of state land and NCR lands to “relatives, nominees and cronies of or companies belonging to Barisan Nasional (BN) leaders”.
The latter practice – allegedly done “without due regard to customary rights over these lands and without regard to the consequences to the NCR landowners” – was described as “a breach of fiduciary duty as a government and tantamount to corruption”.
Participants also called for the word ‘Dayak’ to be reinstated in the definition of ‘natives’ and that the Dayaks be identified by their respective ethnic groups, instead of being classified as ‘lain-lain’ in official forms and documents.
The Dayaks, being a minority bumiputera group, they said, should be allocated special quotas in scholarships and study loans, placement in colleges, and appointments and promotions in the civil service, police and army.
In the delineation of state electoral constituencies, the number of constituencies should be proportionate to the size of the community where the Dayaks form the majority.
‘Bigger change needed’
Iban politician Daniel Tajem and Gabriel Adi, the PKR state assemblyperson for Ngemah were among those at the symposium, which was closed by PKR national vice-president Jeffrey Kitingan.
Jeffrey, who also heads PKR Sabah, said changing the state BN government would not be good enough as a solution.
“We must strive hard to change the federal government too,” he said, reminding participants to be mindful of experience in Sabah.
He was referring to the change of government from the BN-Berajaya to Parti Sabah (PBS) in the 1990s.
“The federal government sent the (Anti-Corruption Agency) and (used the Internal Security Act) to undermine the PBS government,” Jeffrey added.
“They created a federal department through which federal money was to be channeled; they deprived the state of financial assistance and they even bought over PBS elected representatives to defect so that the government would collapse.”
