Filed under: Dams, Indigenous People, Land, Media Reports, Politics, Video Report
From Al-Jazeera English
The Malaysian state of Sarawak plans to build 12 new hydro-electric dams along the state’s waterways, saying the projects will create jobs, provide cheap renewable energy and meet the demands of future industrialisation.
The dams are supposed to push the total generating capacity in the state to 7,000MW by 2020, an increase of more than 600 per cent from the current capacity.
There are plans to expand the aluminium-smelting industry in the state which will need the planned output.
But critics question the sustainability of the project.
They are concerned that the dams will destroy the environment and heritage sites, displace tens of thousands of local indigenous people and are unnecessary for a region that already has more electricity than it needs.
Opponents also say that the projects are magnets for corruption, enriching the private coffers of those in power.
This week on 101 East we talk to those in favour and against Sarawak’s proposed new dams.
This episode of 101 East airs from Thursday, March 19, 2009 at the following times GMT:
Thursday: 1230, 1930; Friday: 0300, 0630; Saturday: 1400; Sunday: 0530; Monday: 0130; Tuesday: 1030; Wednesday: 0730, 1430.
Two thirds of the Bintulu 3 arrested under the Emergency Ordinance has been sent to Simpang Renggam. This means that they will be further detained for 2 more years without trial.
We here at ‘What Rainforest’ would like to express our protest against all forms of detentions without trial which includes the Internal Security Act (ISA) and the Emergency Ordinance (EO). If a person is suspected of a crime, he/she should be brought before a court of law and be formally charged. Justice must be carried out and seen to be carried out at all times.
Below is an article from the Star.
Woman released after two-month detention under EO
by Stephen Then,
The Star Online, 19 March 2009
MIRI: A woman arrested with her husband and brother-in-law under the Emergency Ordinance for alleged armed robbery in Bintulu, northern Sarawak, has been freed after 60 days in detention.
Melati Bekeni, 28, walked free after the Sarawak police released her on Sunday. She will be reunited with her 18-month-old daughter Victoria, whom she was breastfeeding at the time of her arrest, and three-year-old son Vincent.
However, her husband Marai Senggok, also 28, and his brother Bunya, 21, were ordered to be detained at the Simpang Renggam detention centre in Johor.
Bunya, Marai and Melati were arrested in January and detained under the Ordinance after Bintulu police accused them of being involved in a series of robberies.
However, family members claimed the three were arrested because of their dispute with a development consortium over a plot of land the natives claim were an ancestral heritage.
The father of the brothers, tuai rumah (longhouse chief) Sengok Sabang, confirmed yesterday that Melati had been freed.
“She is living with relatives near Miri. My two sons have been flown to Johor. The police did not tell me why they were taken out of Sarawak,” he told The Star.
Sengok appealed to police and the Home Ministry to release his sons, saying they were breadwinners for the family.
Sahabat Alam Malaysia Sarawak field officer Jok Jau Evong said yesterday their lawyers in Kuala Lumpur had learnt that Bunya and Marai had been detained for two years under the Emergency Ordinance.
Suhakam’s commissioner for Sarawak Dr Mohd Hirman Ritom said the commission had tried its best but still failed to get the two released.
by Joe Fernandez
from Malaysiakini.com, 8 March 2009
Green activist, lawyer and ex-Baram MP Harrison Ngau Laing, 49, worries that PKR (Parti Keadilan Rakyat) Sarawak suffers from “the curse of the PBDS Syndrome”.
He denies that he is being a wet blanket and predicts that “time will sadly prove me right unless a miracle happens on the ground to save PKR from itself”.
He has, in recent days, warned party adviser Anwar Ibrahim directly and indirectly against “following in the tragic footsteps of Leo Moggie Anak Irok”, the first and only president of PBDS which was eventually de-registered following a prolonged leadership tussle allegedly “bankrolled by moneybags”. PBDS stands for Parti Bansa Dayak Sarawak.
Laing, who joined PKR officially in December last year after a two-year courtship, following a long spell in the political wilderness, acknowledges that there are important differences between both parties. However, he said this may, as yet, tip the odds in favour of PKR “but we don’t want another Perak here…there are many disturbing similarities as well with PBDS”.
“It is clear that there is strong sentiment on the ground for political change in Sarawak because voters are sick and tired of Taib Mahmud who refuses to go away despite his ill-health. They would also like to see the back of Alfred Jabu and George Chan but Chan has at least pledged to quit anyway unlike the other two,” is Laing’s reading of the current situation in Sarawak.
“But that’s about as far as it goes. There are few signs, as yet, that the current anti-BN public sentiment will translate into regime change as expected by PKR even if Jabu is not replaced, as speculated, by senior PBB vice-president Douglas Uggah.”
‘Living on hope and wishful thinking’
“PKR in Sarawak seems set to suffer the same fate as PBDS, wresting defeat from the jaws of victory. There’s so much living on hope and wishful thinking. They just sit around attending sponsored party dinner functions, waiting for some nice things to happen to them one day. This is the PBDS Syndrome…the Dayak curse.”
Laing’s assessment on the ground is uncharacteristically bleak for an incurable optimist and idealist.
He believes that PKR’s dream of adding Sarawak to its booty of war will not materialise in the immediate future, despite the “little boy “ (Anwar) telling the emperor (Taib) that he has no clothes, “unless the winds of change blow from within the party itself so it can manifest itself at the ballot box”.
Change must begin with discarding the current top-down approach, reiterates Laing, loosening the grip of the Kuching Mafia on the party, keeping moneybags at bay, democratisation and meaningful decentralisation. It is agreed that Anwar is perhaps “the most energetic politician in Malaysia” but he cannot continue to be “a one-man political entertainment show”.
“At present, the messengers are carrying only good tidings to the king (Anwar) and the result has been a kind of euphoria which has induced a tendency to be complacent and rest on one’s laurels,” said Laing.
“There is a dire need to reduce the influence of political has-beens, sore losers, sour grapes, those with a self-serving agenda and others with no record of serving the public. All of them need to be put in their proper places if they want to be in PKR.”
Laing has brought up his take on Sarawak at the national leadership level but the reply from Anwar was telling. He wants the party to be inclusive, “not exclusive”, an ideal with which Laing agrees but the question is “who should be calling the shots in the party (PKR), certainly not those who are no great loss to the BN”.
Skeletons in the cupboard
Laing, who won his only term as MP (1990 – 1995) as an independent against the combined might of the BN and came late to law as a distance learner in the process, opines that the ex-PBDS – the figure given is 90,000 – and BN influx into PKR is largely led by discredited politicians who will be rejected by the people.
He defines “discredited people” as those who have no record of service to the people despite being given the opportunity to serve, have skeletons in the cupboard, are not wanted by the BN itself and may not be above horse-trading with PBB even when the chips are not down.
“Why is Nicholas Bawin – PKR Batang Ai – going around telling people that there is not even one sincere leader among the Dayaks? He’s right but he should also include himself – ‘that’s right’, fumes ‘we are not perfect’ James Masing and ex-radical Wildfred Nissom of PRS – among them,” said Laing who considers himself among the few leaders to emerge from the grassroots and survivedto fight another day.
“Nicholas Bawin is a very naïve man, a colourless character, with an old longhouse brain who doesn’t understand politics. He doesn’t impress, inspire or motivate people.”
Laing readily dismisses the collective Dayak political leadership as not only insincere, as alleged by Bawin, but “largely a creation of the powers that be that have thrust them on the people and hounded genuine grassroots leaders out of existence”.
The ruling elite prefer those who are vulnerable, to lead the Dayaks, so that they can be easily threatened, blackmailed and intimidated into submission, charges Laing.
“This kind of politics started with Abdul Rahman Yakub – who preceded his nephew Taib as chief minister – and the moneybags linked to SUPP (Sarawak United People’s Party).”
As one example, Laing points out that Taib callously replaced the only Bidayuh member in the Federal Cabinet with his son, Sulaiman, after the general elections last year “because the Bidayuh are led by vulnerable leaders in the BN”.
Taib’s cousin sister – returned unopposed despite being unknown — and brother are also in the Sarawak state assembly as first time representatives.
‘Huge government projects’
As another example, Laing claims that PBDS was actually sponsored by moneybags linked to PBB (Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu) to split SNAP (Sarawak National Party), and “was destroyed dutifully by Masing and Sng Chee Hwa, at PBB’s behest, when Daniel Tajem Anak Miri took over from Moggie”.
“Sng is now back again, like a bad smell that follows us everywhere, sponsoring all the PKR dinner functions so far in Kuching, Bintulu, Sibu and Miri while his son, Larry Sng, enjoys Taib’s patronage and remains an Assistant Minister. This is despite him not being in any political party.”
“The father-in-law (Larry’s) continues to get huge government projects,” notes Laing. “I have warned Anwar about the presence of Sng Snr. He merely said he knows and started preaching again about being inclusive.
“Why is Sng Snr.going around handing out money directly to lower line PKR leaders? I have complained about this. This is a guy who gives money to both sides after obtaining it from government projects.”
Laing wants Sng to donate directly to the party, “if he is sincere”, and not “go around buying up people on the ground” and “then run to the government (in the past) with a big bill to reimburse himself many times over with projects which he can sell. This is stealing from the people”.
However, moneybags and “dubious characters” plaguing PKR in Sarawak are not the least of the party’s problems.
Laing wants some way to be found to integrate, into PKR, the thousands of para-legal trainees from the grassroots who have been turned out over the last ten years by community activists linked to Sahabat Alam Malaysia, Sadia (Sarawak Dayak Iban Association) and Brimas (Borneo Resources Institute).
“This is where the future of PKR in Sarawak and Dayak politics lies,” said Laing.
“If we lose these people, BN will continue to rule even if they lose the next state election. Too much is at stake for PBB. They are already bragging that they know who to buy should PKR take over the state government and we have a situation like that in Perak.”
“Why did Perak happen? It’s because the wrong kind of people were fielded by PKR i.e. people vulnerable to threats and blackmail and lacking in commitment to sincerely serve the people.
“Sarawak could easily turn into another Perak especially when the governor is firmly in the PBB camp…and the Rahman-Taib political dynasty has strong lobbyists in Kuala Lumpur with unlimited funds.”
From Bruno Manser Fonds
11 March 2009
ACCOR, the Paris-based European hotel group is setting conditions for its future cooperation with Malaysia’s Interhill logging group on a 388-room hotel project in Sarawak / East Malaysia. ACCOR is thus reacting to a campaign launched by the Bruno Manser Fund (BMF) over the controversial Novotel Interhill hotel, which is currently under construction in Kuching, the state capital of Sarawak.
The French business group is requesting Interhill to set up social responsibility standards for its logging operations in Sarawak’s Middle Baram region and to implement significant measures within the next six months:
“We have asked those in charge at Interhill to commit themselves, in writing, to the progressive establishment of social responsibility measures”, writes ACCOR in a letter to the Bruno Manser Fund, published today. “The maintenance of our commercial partnership requires the definition of realistic but significant targets. It similarly requires the establishment of a timetable, especially for the next six months, prior to the opening of the hotel. Finally, it requires a verification procedure to be drawn up in conjunction with our local teams.”
The French hotel group explicitly states that BMF and the Accor group “share common aims, particularly in the field of local development and the fight against the sexual exploitation of children.” ACCOR’s letter is signed by Hélène Roques, the group’s Director for Sustainable Development.
By putting pressure on Interhill, Accor is acknowledging BMF’s criticism of Interhill’s socially and environmentally destructive logging practices. Interhill’s logging operations in a 55,000 hectare timber concession in Sarawak’s Middle Baram region have had a devastating effect on the indigenous Penan communities and have depleted the tropical rainforests which have provided the basis of the Penan’s livelihood for centuries.
The Bruno Manser Fund welcomes ACCOR’s decision to pressurise Interhill on social standards but warns that results might not so easily be achieved, given that Interhill has a long track record of corporate misbehaviour. “Social responsibility should, first and foremost, entail recognition of the native communities’ land rights and respect for the “adat” – the customary rights system”, said BMF Director Lukas Straumann.
BMF is asking Interhill to put an immediate stop to its intimidation of local communities and to withdraw all those employees who have been involved in intimidation or harassment from its timber camps in the Middle Baram. Interhill is also being asked to guarantee the security of both the Penan representatives and the victims of alleged sexual abuse in the company’s area of operations. By way of an immediate move, Interhill must withdraw its bulldozers from the community forest of Long Item, a Penan village that is currently struggling to preserve its last forest reserve from logging.
According to ACCOR, Interhill has not yet responded to the French group’s demands. A meeting between the Bruno Manser Fund and ACCOR is scheduled for next week.
by Wani Muthiah
from thestar.com.my 10 march 2009
SHAH ALAM: The Sultan of Selangor, Sultan Sharafuddin Idris Shah, has asked for the rights of the orang asli (aborigines) to be returned to them, especially with regards to their land which had been seized.
The state had come to a stage where the acknowledgement of the rights of every Selangorian has become the basic principle of its administration.
“This is important with regard to the land of the orang asli (aborigine) community,” he said in his opening speech at the state assembly sitting Tuesday.
“In the last few years, the orang asli community has undergone an erosion of identity and it is time their rights be returned to them with the resolution of their land problems.
“I want to stress the need to acknowledge and preserve orang asli land which had been seized from them in the last few years,” said the Sultan.
Sultan Sharafuddin also urged the state government to expedite the identification and gazetting of orang asli land.
“They should be given the land which is rightfully theirs,” he added.
The Sultan said the orang asli community had a rich history with its own tradition, culture, values and perspective — which need not be sacrificed in the name of development.
Sultan Sharafuddin also said the dialogue initiated by the state government with the orang asli community recently should be continued.
He also urged the state’s executive council members to declare their assets as soon as possible in line with good governance.
The declaration of assets should also be accessible to the public online, he added.
The Sultan also emphasised the need for good governance in all aspects of the state administration and added that the integrity and accountability practised by the current state government would be upheld.
