Forest abuse threatens Penan nomads

Forest abuse threatens Penan nomads

By Frank Zeller

MIRI, Malaysia (DPA): "Fifteen years ago we could drink this
water," said the Penan boatman, standing on a rock at the edge of
a muddy jungle river in the interior of Borneo.

Then, he says, timber companies came and logged the rainforest
that has been the home of his nomadic people for millennia. "They
cut roads into the forest and took the trees down the river. The
river turned brown and machine oil was floating on the water.

"We complained to the government. The minister came and said
the river was clean. We asked him to drink the water, but he said
no. Then he went back to his city, where the water comes out of
the tap."

The ancient rainforests of Sarawak in the Malaysian part of
Borneo island, among the richest in biodiversity in the world,
have been home to the Penan hunters and gatherers for some 40,000
years. But because the orang ulu, or people upriver, left no
permanent marks on the forest, they are not regarded as its legal
owners today.

Less than 300 of one of the world's last "wild people" still
live their traditional way of life, and time is running out for
them. While their forests are being logged, the Penan say, river
siltation is killing fish and logging roads are allowing easy
access to wildlife poachers.

The Malaysian Timber Council states on its Internet website
that "of all the indigenous lifestyles, it is that of the nomadic
Penans that poses a conflict between the traditional way of life
and forest harvesting required for the sustainable development of
the state.

"For this reason, the Penans are being encouraged to adopt
more modern farming methods and to settle in areas where services
such as piped water, housing and schools can be provided by the
government."

Some Penan now live in crude longhouses near Borneo's northern
Gunung Mulu National Park, where they are permitted to hunt and
collect forest food. Like most of the estimated 10,000 Penan,
they have been settled by the government, told to learn farming
practices and commerce, and often been converted to Christianity
by mostly Protestant missionaries.

"The Penan were rich, but they have been made poor," said
Bruno Manser, a Swiss activist who lived with them from 1984 to
1990 and was hunted by Malaysian authorities for helping bring
the Penan's plight to the world's attention.

For six years, Manser lived in the forest, hunting with
blowpipes and poison darts, eating sago palm flour and jungle
fruits, sleeping in palm leaf shelters and adopting the Penan's
bowl-cut hairstyle.

"In a Penan community, everything is shared," Manser, now aged
44, recalls, speaking from his Basel home. "There is no hierarchy
and no compulsion. In six years I never saw a fight, and I never
heard a person interrupt another. They may be materially poor,
but they have another kind of wealth which we in the West have
given up long ago."

Despite the peaceful nature of the Penan, who unlike other
Borneo tribes were never head-hunters, they staged a resistance
campaign in the 1980s with Manser's help, protesting and blocking
logging roads.

"Some Penan also learnt how to drive bulldozers," said the old
boatman. "They went to the logging camps at night and crashed the
bulldozers down the mountains."

The blockades were soon outlawed and soldiers came to break up
the protests with batons and tear gas. Manser claims that more
than 700 Penan have been arrested since 1987. In one blockade a
child died, and there were numerous unsolved deaths of protesters
amid a campaign of intimidation, he added.

The logging industry suffered little disruption. By the late
1980s, some 40 percent of Sarawak's virgin forests had been
destroyed, replaced by jungle creepers and secondary forest.
Today, says Manser, only about 10 to 15 percent of the state's
forests have not been degraded.

Frustrated, Manser returned to Sarawak in March this year in
spectacular fashion, flying into the provincial capital Kuching
with a paraglider to visit the state's Chief Minister Taib
Mahmud. It was a publicity stunt which earned him three days in a
police cell where, he hastens to point out, he was well treated.

Manser did not get to meet the minister, whom he blames for
much of the carnage. "The minister controls the timber
concessions and can hand them out or give them away as political
favors to his relatives and cronies, who then make money from
logging," said Manser.

In the same month in which Manser staged his action, Malaysia
- the world's largest tropical hardwood producer - exported
around 1 million cubic metres of timber products. According to
the Malaysian Timber Council, the major source was Sarawak, from
where 386,069 cubic meters of logs alone were exported in March,
mostly to Japan, Taiwan and India.

The statistics come to life on the Baram river near the
prosperous west coast town of Miri: every hour, five or six huge
barges stacked with about 300 logs each can be seen traveling
down the chocolate-colored waterway which is full of smashed wood
and debris.

Some experts estimate that in 20 years all of Sarawak's
primary growth forest will be gone. Says Manser: "The end is
predestined when roads are cut into every last corner of the
forest. The moment a road is there, no law in the world can save
the forest."

Despite the grim outlook, there have been some successes for
the Penan. The London-based group Survival International, which
works for the rights of tribal peoples, reports that in January
two Penan communities set up a blockade to obstruct a logging
company operating in their forest without permission.

"To everyone's surprise the district officer ruled in the
Penan's favor," says the group in a report. "The company was told
to leave the area and to compensate the Penan."

Still, the only really effective way to tackle the problem is
on a global scale, says Manser. Labeling of tropical timber
products would alert the end-users in the industrialized world
and could encourage sustainable forestry practices through
consumer pressure.

Logging, both legal and illegal, continues unabated in the
Malaysian states of Sarawak and Sabah and in neighboring
Indonesia, where the forest is cut down and then burned, covering
the region in smog year after year, often to make room for oil
palm plantations.

Time is running out, say the Penan. Late last year, a group of
their leaders appealed in an open letter to the outside world:
"Because of uncontrolled logging activities, our lands have been
greatly reduced and the forest and rivers destroyed.

"Outsiders have entered our lands at will and robbed us of our
rights to the forest and our properties. Nevertheless, we are
committed not to surrender and to continue our struggle, because
without the forest and rivers we are unable to continue our
traditional way of life."