By Rainforest Rescue
Hundreds of Penan are demonstrating with blowpipes in the Malaysian rain forest. No one gets past the road blockades of the Aborigines in the jungle of Sarawak, not even the police.
Instead of upholding the rule of law, police are doing the bidding of corrupt politicians and unscrupulous business people. They have seized the land of the Penan to turn it into monocultural oil palm plantations after razing the tropical timber.
Police had to turn back to fetch reinforcements. The Penan now fear police excesses.
Lumber and palm oil corporations have been plundering the Penan’s rain forest for decades. Timber fellers have penetrated the Sarawak jungles since the 1960s. The forests of the Malaysian part of the island Borneo were degraded to a raw material source of the lumber industry.
With every felled tree there disappears irretrievably not just a piece of habitat of threatened animals and plants, but also the life source of the Penan.
With bulldozers and heavy draft machines infamous corporations like Samling, Interhill, Shin Yang, KTS and Rimbunan Hijau haul the valuable giant trees out of the jungle. The lumber getters flatten everything that’s in their way – including the fishing, hunting and gathering grounds and small rice fields of the Penan.
Until a few years ago the Penan still lived as nomadic hunters and gatherers in the jungle. As more and more of it was destroyed, most of them became sedentary.
Consequences of the deforestation are illnesses, increasing problems with alcoholism and tobacco consumption; in 2008 cases of sexual assault and rapes of Penan girls and women were revealed in central Baram.
Now the rest of the Penan’s jungle is to be cut down. It is to be completely razed and the land turned into endless industrial monocultures of oil palms and acacias.
The western world craves cheap palm oil to use for foodstuffs, chemical products and as so-called “biofuel”. The acacias are the raw material of the cellulose industry.
The activities are funded by large European banks such as Credit Suisse of Switzerland. Despite international protests, Credit Suisse organised the stock exchange launch of Samling in 2007 and has just recently decided to increase the capital of the Indonesian palm oil corporation, Golden Agri-Resources.
For the Penan the oil palm plantations will wipe out their culture. They have decided to resist to the last and have for days been blocking several main roads in their rain forest. 13 Penan villages with 3,000 people are already involved.
Please write to the Malaysian government and demand recognition of the land rights of the Penan and an immediate stop to the razing of rain forest.
At https://www.regenwald.org/protestaktion.php?id=443 scroll right down to the form. The letters below will be sent out on your behalf. Or send them yourself, feeling free to change anything.
Y.A.B. Dato' Sri Mohd. Najib Bin Tun Haji Abdul Razak, Prime minister, ppm@pmo.gov.my
- Y.B. Dato' Seri Hishammuddin Bin Tun Hussein, Minister of home affairs, hishammuddin@moha.gov.my
- Y.B. Tan Sri Bernard Giluk Dompok, Minister of plantation industries and commodities, pybm@kppk.gov.my
- H.E. Datuk Othman Hashim, Ambassador of the Permanent Mission of Malaysia To The United Nations in Geneva, malgeneva@kln.gov.my
- Tan Sri Musa Hassan, Inspector General of Royal Malaysian Police, rmp@rmp.gov.my
Dear Prime Minister, Minister, Mr Ambassador, Inspector General of Police,
The Penan people in Sarawak are desperately trying to defend themselves against the advance of the timber and palm oil industries. Since the 60s logging companies have already cleared large parts of their ancestral territory and rain forest and now they are threatened by final expulsion and extermination.
The Penan have protested for more than twenty years with road blockades and other forms of peaceful resistance against the industrial logging on the land they have lived on for generations. Their survival depends on the rainforest and on their ancestral territory.
In past decades there has been little serious effort to protect the Penan from attacks and to ensure their survival. The government of Sarawak has denied the Penan any legal rights to their traditional land and ignores the recommendations of the Malaysian Human Rights Commission, SUHAKAM.
Because of the many conflicts between rural communities and the government, a coalition of Malaysian indigenous organizations have recently called for a nationwide moratorium on new plantations. But government and state institutions ignore these just demands. In Sarawak alone it is planned to double the area of oil palm plantations to 1 million hectares.
The rain forest deforestation and the installation of huge industrial monocultures also threaten biodiversity, survival of endangered animal and plant species, soil and water and climate.
I urge you therefore immediately to:
- Recognize the land rights of the Penan and other indigenous groups in Sarawak.
- Take all necessary measures to ensure a peaceful resolution of conflicts.
- Cancel the plans and projects for construction of huge hydroelectric dams in Sarawak.
Sincerely,
The Penan people in Sarawak are desperately trying to defend themselves against the advance of the timber and palm oil industries. Since the 60s logging companies have already cleared large parts of their ancestral territory and rain forest and now they are threatened by final expulsion and extermination.
The Penan have protested for more than twenty years with road blockades and other forms of peaceful resistance against the industrial logging on the land they have lived on for generations. Their survival depends on the rainforest and on their ancestral territory.
In past decades there has been little serious effort to protect the Penan from attacks and to ensure their survival. The government of Sarawak has denied the Penan any legal rights to their traditional land and ignores the recommendations of the Malaysian Human Rights Commission, SUHAKAM.
Because of the many conflicts between rural communities and the government, a coalition of Malaysian indigenous organisations have recently called for a nationwide moratorium on new plantations. But government and state institutions ignore these just demands. In Sarawak alone it is planned to double the area of oil palm plantations to one million hectares.
The rain forest deforestation and the installation of huge industrial monocultures also threatens biodiversity, survival of endangered animal and plant species, soil and water and climate.
I urge you therefore immediately to:
- Recognize the land rights of the Penan and other indigneous groups in Sarawak.
- Take all necessary measures to ensure a peaceful resolution of conflicts.
- Cancel the plans and projects for construction of huge hydroelectric dams in Sarawak.
