Dear Prime Minister – As you know, Malaysia voted in favour of the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on Indigenous Rights (UNDRIP) and is a signatory to the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. Malaysia is also a member of the International Finance Corporation (formulator of the World Bank’s sustainability framework) and Sarawak Energy is […]
Sarawak Energy adopted a familiar tactic towards the renewal of the blockade at Murum by the indigenous Penan people at the weekend. They patronised them, by complaining that they had been “instigated” by un-named NGOs. Over the past days there have been reports that scores of the indigenous tribes people have again brought the construction
As the flood waters prepare to rise at Sarawak’s latest dam site in Murum, highly disturbing evidence has been passed to Sarawak Report concerning the use of indentured labour (a form of illegal slavery) on the project. Thousands of Chinese, Burmese, Bagladeshi and Pakistani workers were imported to build the dam, in what was pristine
Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud clearly thinks it is his human right to do exactly what he likes. To question or oppose him or refuse to comply is simply an outrageous violation of his right to do as he pleases. He has taken vast territories, destroyed the world’s most precious forests and rivers and presumably
Last Week Taib Mahmud issued a notice to gazette the remaining 18 islands in the Bakun reservoir lake as a National Park. He will probably be putting himself up for an environmental award for doing so. But what a pity he did not gazette the region back in 1998, before the company Pacific Chemicals comprehensively logged
The US$1,700 entrance fee to Taib’s showcase dam building conference, which opened at the Borneo Convention Centre today, is well beyond the means of all the poor folk who stand to be affected by his catastrophic plans to swamp Sarawak. However, they gathered in protest outside and made their voices heard and their presence felt
An investigation by the Swiss NGO the Bruno Manser Fund (BMF) has revealed that Sarawak Energy’s Nowegian Chief Executive has handed more than US$220 million worth of contracts to companies controlled by the Taib family. BMF therefore slams Torstein Dale Sjotveit as being “complicit” in Sarawak’s political corruption and has demanded he be sacked. The
The Chief Executive of Taib’s closely controlled Sarawak Energy Board, the Norwegian Torstein Dale Sjotveit, has been working hard to merit his extraordinary four million dollar a year salary. His principle job is to push through SCORE, which is the Chief Minister’s monstrous plan to build up to 50 dams in the state. It is
Sarawak Report has received secret maps revealing that a planned BN announcement of land allocations for the displaced families of Sungai Asap is merely a sham. The maps show that the 32,000 hectares that BN are proposing to offer in a pre-election gambit to win back votes are in fact gazetted as Pesu-Pelong Protected Forest Area
Sarawak Report has received a leaked copy of a devastating official report on the treatment of the natives of Sabah and Sarawak, which BN has been trying to keep secret until after the election. In the report Malaysia’s human rights commission Suhakam has lambasted Taib’s State Government on count after count over its conduct over
Malaysia and Sarawak and Sabah all gained democracy at the same time as independence. That means that the people are in charge and the politicians are named ‘servants’ of the people like they are in Britain and America and other democracies. These politicians have fixed salaries and should expect to be changed every few years
As predicted by Sarawak Report, James Masing has been immediately taken to task by his BN boss for daring to say publicly that the 12 dams planned under SCORE are not necessary. Within hours of the appearance of the Land Development Minister’s explosive admissions during an interview with the international news agency AFP, Masing was
Was the Land Development Minister authorised yesterday when he confirmed all the criticisms about his Chief Minister’s mad dam projects and agreed with the opposition parties and campaigners that they aren’t all necessary? If so, can the Chief Minister immediately and officially confirm on behalf of the Sarawak State Government that his plans for 8
At the last Federal Election Taib did not bother to visit Baram. To him it was just a source of timber which he could exploit, handing vast logging concessions to his crony companies like Samling and to politicians he needed to control, while leaving the people destitute. One such politician was Jacob Sagan, the local
The world’s top news agency has now added to the growing number of features questioning Taib Mahmud’s crazy idea to turn Sarawak into a vast ‘Industrial Park’, providing cheap electricity for the world’s dirtiest smelting industries. In its feature on the Murum Dam the recent Reuters article begins with the observation that at least 40
The growing international understanding of Taib’s style of corrupted and kleptocratic (thieving) government is reflected in an opinion piece published this week by Australia’s Canberra Times. The article criticises the “destruction of the Borneo Rainforests” and Taib’s “Great Leap Forward” plans for 12 mega-dams: “There is method in the madness. As critics repeatedly point out,
Sarawak Report has learnt that campaigners can claim victory after statements yesterday by Hydro Tasmania boss, Roy Adair, pledging that the company is withdrawing from its guiding role over Taib’s mega-dam projects. Adair, who had till recently enthused over Hydro Tasmania’s partnership with Sarawak Energy’s programme of up to 50 dams to power Taib’s ambitious
Freedom of information requests in Australia have recently brought to light the full, unedited interview of SEB Board Member and spokesman, Idris Buang, by the TV programme Dateline, about Sarawak’s mega-dam plans. And his arrogant and incautious remarks, which disparage the native way of life of many of Sarawak’s indigenous tribes, have brought gasps of
Taib has descended from his pedestal to engage with critics of his ‘great leap forward’ plan to plonk 50 hydro-electric dams across Sarawak’s rivers. That is to say, he has raged at unnamed persons from his platform at the DUN, who dared to say that he might not have had such a good idea with
The people advising Sarawak Energy (SEB), in particular Australia’s Hydro Tasmania, have taken every opportunity to portray the dams planned for Sarawak as a ‘sustainable’ and ‘renewable’ energy source, without bad consequences like fossil fuel. Hydro Tasmania in fact frequently implies that dams are “carbon neutral” and has declared that the company itself will become
Nick Wright is the Australian from Tasmania who acts as Vice President at Sarawak Energy Berhad in charge of ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ (CSR). In particular, he is in charge of the ‘re-settlement’ of tens of thousands of indigenous people due to be flooded from their homes by the damming of 12 major rivers. So, surely
Police numbers are being increased around the Penan blockade at the Murum Dam. Yesterday, they announced that they had detained an NGO sympathiser, who was bringing food and declared that this humanitarian act was ‘incitement’. “It is not wrong if he had sent the items to the Penans at their longhouse”, stated the local police
As the Penan people of Murum enter the fourth week of their blockade against the Murum Dam, local and international NGOs have rallied to their support. On Friday protestors, surrounded by news reporters, gathered outside Hydro-Tasmania’s impressive tower block headquarters in Hobart to demand that the company cease its lucrative partnership programme with Sarawak Energy.[click
Taib’s BN Ministers have been going blue in the face, complaining “instigators” are behind the Murum blockade and saying that all is now settled with the Penan at Murum dam. Top side kick and very unaccountably wealthy Planning Minister, Awang Tenga has been leading the attack alleging that the community are now happy with the
Penan blockaders, who have brought construction on the Murum Dam to a standstill over the past ten days, have reacted with outrage at the news that their assemblyman, BN’s Liwan Lagang, has been telling the media that a settlement has been reached. In response they have instead tightened and extended the blockade to another approach
