Wisdom

Loggers Raped Borneo Girls

Indigenous tribal girls have been sexually abused by loggers in remote jungles on Borneo island, a Malaysian government report said, in the first official verification of rape accusations involving timber companies.

The report made public this week bolsters claims by the Penan tribal community of mistreatment by the timber industry, which activists say has encroached on the customary rights of ancient tribes over forests and destroyed their ancestral lands.

A team from the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry investigated rape claims by Penan women in November after activists complained that police failed to do anything.

Timber industry officials have said in the past they were not aware of such misconduct by their workers. No company was singled out in the report and timber company officials reached Wednesday declined to comment. All of the companies are Malaysian, as are the accused workers.

A copy of the report seen by The Associated Press on Wednesday provided extensive interviews with Penan women in Sarawak state in Borneo who claimed that timber workers raped or tried to sexually abuse schoolgirls, including some as young as 10 years old.


One teenage girl said she bore two daughters after being raped by a worker who repeatedly intruded into her room, according to the report. Another girl said she was raped when she accepted a lift to school from a logger in his truck, while several others spoke of similar cases involving their friends.

"This sexual abuse mostly occurs due to the victims' dependence on transport using vehicles owned by logging companies and the presence of outsiders who deal with villagers to buy jungle produce," the report said.

The government team did not specifically explain why it believed the rape claims were true, but it interviewed four women with firsthand experience of sexual abuse and many others who claimed that it was a common occurrence in their communities.

"The report clearly shows they were raped," said Colin Nicholas of the Penan Support Group, a loose coalition of 35 private groups. "Why is the police taking so long to do something? This reflects very poorly on the police."

Huzir Mohamed, head of Sarawak's police criminal investigations, said he could not comment on the report, but denied police had failed to investigate rape claims.

Authorities probed three complaints last year but found "nothing with proper evidence for us to proceed in court," Huzir said, adding that activists often did not give specific details to support their claims.

Authorities estimate there are about 16,000 Penans among the 24 indigenous tribes who live in Sarawak, where forests cover about 70 percent of the state. Many of them are impoverished and live in remote areas, cut off from modern education and health care facilities.

Timber is Sarawak's second biggest export after oil and gas. Malaysian laws do not recognize or protect the indigenous Penan customs and right to land ownership.

Associated Press writer Julia Zappei contributed to this report.

Logging Protests Spread

Protests by the Penan tribe in Borneo have escalated, with twelve villages coming together to mount new road blockades against the logging and plantation companies that are destroying their rainforest.

Journalists covering at the blockades were intercepted by police with machineguns and taken away for questioning.

Hundreds of Penan have blocked roads at three new locations in the interior of Sarawak, in the Malaysian part of the island of Borneo. The protestors are demanding an end to logging and plantations on their land without their consent, and recognition of their land ownership rights.

BBC TV presenter Bruce Parry visited the Penan for his hit series, Tribe. One Penan told him, “It’s not true that we Penan do not want progress. Not the ‘progress’ where logging companies move on to the land. What we want is real progress. What we need is land rights first of all.”

The new protests come only weeks after blockades by two nearby Penan villages. The destruction of their forest robs the hunter-gatherer Penan of the animals and plants they eat and pollutes the rivers they fish in. Without the forest, many Penan have difficulty feeding their families.

The Penan have been struggling for more than twenty years against the logging companies that operate on their land with full government backing. In areas where the valuable trees have been cut down, the companies are clearing the forest completely to make way for oil palm plantations.

The blockades are aimed at forcing the Malaysian timber companies Samling, Interhill, Rimbunan Hijau and KTS to end their activities on the Penan’s land without the tribe’s consent. One of the earlier blockades, mounted in June at the settlement of Ba Marong, resulted in the withdrawal of a KTS subsidiary from the area – but the Penan fear that the loggers may return.

In another Penan area, the notorious company Samling is advancing on an area of the tribe’s forest that has never been logged before. Observers say that the road built by the company is likely to reach the remote Ba Jawi area within weeks.

Survival’s director Stephen Corry said today, “The logging and plantation companies are preventing the Penan from being able to feed their children. It’s no wonder they’re taking to the barricades. Penan in some areas are currently receiving food aid – before the loggers arrived, they would never have needed such hand-outs.

The Malaysian government must recognize that this land is theirs and stops sanctioning its destruction.”

Rainforest And Penan Tribe

LONG BELOK, Malaysia — Hundreds of Penan tribespeople armed with spears and blowpipes have set up new blockades deep in the Borneo jungles, escalating their campaign against logging and palm oil plantations.

Three new barricades, guarded by Penan men and women who challenged approaching timber trucks, have been established in recent days. There are now seven in the interior of Malaysia's Sarawak state.

"They are staging this protest now because most of their land is already gone, destroyed by logging and grabbed by the plantation companies," said Jok Jau Evong from Friends of the Earth in Sarawak."This is the last chance for them to protect their territory. If they don't succeed, there will be no life for them, no chance for them to survive.

"Penan chiefs said that after enduring decades of logging which has decimated the jungles they rely on for food and shelter, they now face the new threat of clear-felling to make way for crops of palm oil and planted timber.

"Since these companies came in, life has been very hard for us. Before it was easy to find animals in the forest and hunt them with blowpipes," said Alah Beling, headman of Long Belok where one of the barricades has been built.

"The forest was once our supermarket, but now it's hard to find food, the wild boar have gone," he said in his settlement, a scenic cluster of wooden dwellings home to 298 people and reachable only by a long suspension bridge.

Alah Beling said he fears that plans to establish plantations for palm oil -- which is used in food and for biofuel -- on their ancestral territory, will threaten their lifestyle and further pollute the village river with pesticide run-off.

"Once our river was so clear you could see fish swimming six feet deep," he said as he gestured at the waterway, which like most others in the region has been turned reddish-brown by the soil that cascades from eroded hillsides.Indigenous rights group Survival International said the blockades are the most extensive since the late 1980s and early 1990s when the Penan's campaign to protect their forests shot to world attention.

"It's amazing they're still struggling on after all these years, more than 20 years after they began to try to fight off these powerful companies," said Miriam Ross from the London-based group.

Official figures say there are more than 16,000 Penan in Sarawak, including about 300 who still roam the jungle and are among the last truly nomadic people on Earth.

The blockades, which Friends of the Earth said involve 13 Penan communities home to up to 3,000 people, are aimed at several Malaysian timber and plantation companies including Samling, KTS, Shin Yang and Rimbunan Hijau.

After clearing much of the valuable timber from Sarawak, a vast state which lies on Malaysia's half of Borneo island, some of these companies are now converting their logging concessions into palm oil and acacia plantations.

"They told us earlier this month they were coming to plant palm oil, and I said if you do we will blockade," said Alah Beling.

"They told us we don't have any rights to the land, that they have the licence to plant here. I felt very angry -- how can they say we have no right to this land where our ancestors have lived for generations?

"Even on land that has been logged in the past, Penan can still forage for sago which is their staple food, medicinal plants, and rattan and precious aromatic woods which are sold to buy essential goods.

"Oil palm is worse because nothing is left. If they take all our land, we will not be able to survive," the Long Belok headman said.

Sarawak's Rural Development Minister James Masing admitted some logging companies had behaved badly and "caused extensive damage" but said the Penan were "good storytellers" and their claims should be treated with caution.

"The Penan are the darlings of the West, they can't do any wrong in the eyes of the West," he said.Masing said disputes were often aimed at wringing more compensation from companies, or stemmed from conflicts between Penan and other indigenous tribes including the Kenyah and Kayan about overlapping territorial claims.

He said the current surge in plantation activity was triggered by Sarawak's goal to double its palm oil coverage to 1.0 million hectares (2.47 million acres) -- an area 14 times bigger than Singapore.

"The time we have been given to do this is running short. 2010 is next year so we want to make that target and that is why there may be a push to do it now, to fulfil our goal established 10 years ago," he said.

"In some areas the logging has not been done in accordance with the rules and some of the loggers have caused extensive damage. That does happen and I do sympathise with the Penan along those lines," he said.

"But the forest has become a source of income for the state government so we have to exploit it".Driving through the unsealed roads that reach deep into the Borneo interior, evidence of the new activity is clear with whole valleys stripped of vegetation and crude terraces carved into the hills ready for seedlings.Most of the companies declined to comment on the allegations made by the Penan, but Samling said it "regrets to learn about the blockades".

"We have long worked with communities in areas we operate to ensure they lead better lives," it said in a statement.Its website says its acacia timber plantations in Sarawak will "enhance the health of the forests" and that it uses "only the most sensitive ways to clear the land".

The Penan allegations could discredit Malaysia?s claims that it produces sustainable palm oil, particularly in Europe and the US where activists blame the industry for deforestation and driving orangutans towards extinction.Indigenous campaigners say that past blockades have seen violence and arrests against tribespeople, but village chiefs -- some of whom were detained during the 1980s blockades -- said they did not fear retribution.

"We're not afraid. They're the ones destroying my property. Last time we didn't know the law and now to protect ourselves, but now we know our rights," said Ngau Luin, the chief of Long Nen where another barricade was set up.

An AFP team reporting at the blockades was photographed by angry timber company officials, and later intercepted at a roadblock by police armed with machineguns and taken away for questioning.

The plight of the Penan was made famous in the 1980s by environmental activist Bruno Manser, who waged a crusade to protect their way of life and fend off the loggers. He vanished in 2000 -- many suspect foul play.

By Sarah Stewart (AFP) – Aug 22, 2009

Who is Bruno Manser

The non-profit organization, Bruno Manser Fonds, based in Basel, Switzerland, has spent three years preserving, digitalizing, and inventorying Manser's massive collection of photographs.

The photographs will be available through the Bruno Manser Fonds website: www.bmf.ch/en.

The life of Bruno Manser
Bruno Manser lived among the Penan peoples from 1984-1990, during this time he became intimately aware with their struggles. Deforestation was rampant in Borneo, destroying the rainforest along with the livelihood of the Penan people. Manser tried several non-violent means to make Malaysia and the developed world aware of the plight of the Penan people and Borneo's rainforest.

He organized peaceful blockades of logging roads in Sarawak with the Penan people. In 1999, using a hang glider, he landed on the Chief Minister Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud's lawn in Kuching. He offered the minister a truce if the Malaysian government would set a biosphere around the Penan people's territory. He offer was denied.

In Switzerland he went on a sixty-day hunger strike before Berne's Swiss federal parliament building in an effort to press the Swiss government to ban tropical timber.

Fifteen years later, the Swiss have not adopted the ban. Such actions made him the most wanted person in the state of Sarawak.

Manser was further declared ‘persona non grata' in Malaysia; reports of a bounty on his head of up to $40,000 circulated. Despite this, he returned numerous times to the Penan people. He disappeared on his last trip in 2000. His body was never found, and in 2005 he was declared missing and presumed dead. Allegations have been made that he was murdered by loggers or the Malaysian government, but no evidence has surfaced.

"Bruno Manser dedicated his life to saving the unique rainforests of Borneo as basis of livelihood of the Penan and as a heritage of mankind," Straumann says. "He was key to making the Penan's struggle for the conservation of their forests known on an international level. He is also an important example of how much impact one individual can have in environmental matters." The Penan people today and their future

Despite Manser's efforts, deforestation continued in Borneo and the Penan people were increasingly forced to abandon traditions and lead more settled lives. Without the forest that provided them with everything, they could not survive the way their ancestors had. Currently only 200 Penans, out of some 10,000, live nomadically.

A large blow occurred recently to the Penans when longtime anti-logging activist and chieftain, Keleasu Naan, was found dead. Broken bones on the body led the Penans to believe he was murdered. Under pressure local police have announced that they will exhume Naan's body to determine his cause of death.

Meanwhile, Naan's son, Nick Keleasu, has stated that he was offered $8,000 dollars by a timber company to retract a statement he made in which he said he believed "foul play" was involved in his father's death.

Despite such setbacks—and the continuing destruction of the forest—Lukas Straumann is not without hope. He believes that some of the decade's worth of damage can be undone: "We should not forget that some of the secondary forests, which were logged in the 1980s, have regenerated and can still play an important cultural and environemental role."

He also sees new possibilities in the photos to reach-out to Malaysians and Southeast Asia in general. "I think these pictures will help raise global awareness on the Penan's struggle and their yet unresolved problems. The power of images can hardly be overestimated. By making them public on the internet, we also want to enable the Southeast Asian public to get access to them.

The electronic media are in a position to break the monopoly of the Malaysian, and in particular the Sarawak print media, many of which are controlled or influenced by the timber industry."

Developed countries can be a strong advocate for the forests of Borneo, if they step-up. Straumann explains that currently "the European Union is negotiating a "Voluntary Partnership Agreement" on timber trade issues with Malaysia.

European Citizens can pressure their governments not to relent to the lobbying of the Malaysian timber industry, which, on a worldwide scale, is playing a leading role in the destruction of the World's tropical forests - not only in Malaysia, but also in countries like Gabon, Guyana, Papua New Guinea."

Recently, a Malaysian company was stopped from deforesting 70% of Woodlark Island in Papua New Guinea for palm oil plantations because the plan was protested heavily by islanders and internationals.

Straumann describes Interhill as "one of the worst logging companies operating on Penan lands...[which] are now reinvesting their profits from the Penan's forests in a big hotel project." In 1984 when Manser went to Sarawak, 45% of its forest remained. Today, the figure is less than 10%. "In an overall view, things have clearly become worse for the Penan people," Straumann told Mongabay.

"After some ninety percent of Sarawak's forests have been logged, plantation projects, in particular for oil palm, and new hydropower schemes are new threats to the Penan's livelihood.

The combination of unrelenting deforestation and new rising threats to the region, creates a situation that probably would've spurred Bruno Manser into some daring action.

As it stands, if the situation on the ground doesn't change, his photos may be the best evidence of the lives the Penan peoples once possessed and the forest that used to be.