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The Malaysian state of Sarawak was until recently home to some of the last nomadic peoples of Borneo, who roamed its wild and rich rainforests as they had done since time immemorial. Starting in the early 1980s, industrial logging companies moved deep into Sarawak’s hinterland, tearing down forests, forcing forest peoples from their traditional lands, and laying the groundwork for large-scale conversion of biodiverse ecosystems into monoculture plantations.
Sarawak’s Indigenous peoples put up resistance against these state-backed incursions into their traditional territories. One of the most dramatic outcomes of these efforts came in 2016, when the Chief Minister of Sarawak cancelled the Baram mega-dam project.
Samling is the mega-logging company that has received concessions to chop down over one million hectares of Sarawak’s once pristine and immensely valuable tropical rainforest over the past four decades, mainly thanks to the decision-making of the present Governor Abdul Taib Mahmud.
Company officers like to boast that in the process the company became the largest single global customer of Caterpillar bulldozers. Think about the level of destruction.
The same company has been proven by Sarawak Report to have gifted at least two North American mansions to the same Governor of Sarawak, but such trades are of course merely the tip of an iceberg of wealth and profit divided amongst the crony elite of the state arising from this plunder and the ensuing orgy of mono-culture plantations again rolled out by Samling.
Threat of legal action against Indigenous Borneans protesting timber company
by Danielle Keeton-Olsen on 1 June 2021
For more than a year, Indigenous communities in Malaysian Borneo have been campaigning against timber conglomerate Samling and its subsidiaries.
Indigenous groups and environmental NGOs allege the company failed to obtain free, prior and informed consent of communities affected by its certified-sustainable timber production plantations; the company denies the allegations.
In late May, Samling subsidiaries threatened to take legal action against Indigenous communities alleging the company was involved in trespass, damage or destruction of forest.
NGOs describe the letters as an attempt to silence Indigenous communities who have spoken out against the company.