|
|
|
Photos by late Borneo rainforest hero, indigenous rights activist go online Jeremy Hance, mongabay.com April 17, 2008 Bruno Manser Fonds releases over 10,000 photos by environmentalist hero Bruno Manser
Lukas Straumann, Director of the Bruno Manser Fonds, believes the photos to be an important legacy for Bruno Manser work. "They document the culture of South East Asia's last hunter-gatherers in a crucial moment when their culture came under pressure through large-scale systematic destruction of their ecosystem," Starumann told Mongabay.com, adding that "apart from their socio-cultural value, the pictures could also become important evidence in land rights litigations for Penan communities who struggle to have their land rights legally recognized by the courts." 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
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 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."
In addition, Straumann says "people can write to banks such as HSBC, Credit Suisse and Macquarie Securities to stop their cooperation with Samling Global Ltd". Samling Global Ltd possesses the largest territory of Penan lands. Straumann says that the corporation "has gained immense profits from the Penan's forests and is continuing to encroach on their native lands". Concerned citizens should also contact the French Hotel Group Accor to "stop their cooperation with Interhill in the Novotel Interhill hotel project in Sarawak's capital Kuching." 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. Bruno Manser Fonds News index | RSS | Add to MyYahoo! Advertisements: Organic Apparel from Patagonia | Insect-repelling clothing |
MONGABAY.COM
T-SHIRTS 
CALENDARS 
CANVAS BAGS 
|
|
|
