The Sarawak government mocked the plight of its rainforest people in a press release issued earlier this month, says a rights’ group.
The release says forest people are poised to benefit from massive dam and forestry projects under the Sarawak Corridor of Renewable Energy (SCORE) scheme that will convert the Malaysian state’s rivers into lakes and forests into open pit mines, wood-pulp plantations, and oil palm estates.
“SCORE will develop 10 key industries including hydropower, heavy industry and tourism,” stated the release. “Baram, currently a rural and underdeveloped area, will benefit from a new hydro dam. As a result, the district will attract a wide range of industries such as palm oil, pulp and paper and timber which will provide job opportunities for the indigenous people living there.”
Samling bulldozers near Ba Jawi. Photo courtesy of BMF. |
But the Bruno Manser Fund, a Swiss NGO which works to secure rights for Sarawk’s forest people, says these projects will further marginalize groups like the Penan, whose culture and livelihoods are closely tied to healthy forests.
“The statement on SCORE is an outrageous lie,” Lukas Straumann of BMF told mongabay.com. “The dams cannot be realized without displacing thousands of natives from their traditional lands. This is why the dam projects, in particular the Baram dam, are met with strong resistance from the longhouses.”
The Penan, a group of once-nomadic forest tribes, has fiercely resisted loggers and plantation developers. In recent years their strategy for defending their land has mostly transitioned from armed standoffs to taking legal action. But neither has been effective in protecting their forest homeland. Vast swathes of Sarawak’s rainforest has been lost, while the government and companies have largely ignored court rulings in favor of the Penan. The government, which has long pushed forest dwelling Penan to leave the forest and settle permanently, has recently made a policy of targeting native customary rights land for conversion to industrial oil palm plantations, which provide few employment opportunities for the Penan.
Critics say the government’s interest in these large development projects stems from opportunities for corruption. Sarawak’s Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud is believed to have squirreled away hundreds of millions to billions of dollars in ill-gotten gains during his 30 years in power. A recent investigation found that Taib controls properties worth hundreds of millions of dollars in Canada, Australia, the U.K. and the U.S. despite earning a salary of less than $200,000 a year.
“It is also known that SCORE is a scheme linked to massive corruption in the building sector,” said Straumann. “Sarawak’s main construction companies (CMS, Naim Cendera etc.) are closely linked to the family of Taib Mahmud who is hoping to enrich himself further with these unnecessary dam projects (there is a power glut in Sarawak already). We prefer to rename it SCORR – Sarawak Corridor of Corruption.”
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