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."