Friday, April 2, 2010
A Truly Wonderful Victory For Justice!
Victorious Kayan plaintiffs from Long Teran Kanan with lawyer Harrison Ngau (in dark suit)
Borneo natives win class action suit against Malaysian oil palm giant
Controversial IOI group loses 12-year legal battle as Sarawak court declares its land leases "null and void"
MIRI, SARAWAK/MALAYSIA - More than twelve years after going to court, the Kayan native community of Long Teran Kanan on the Tinjar river in the Malaysian part of Borneo have won an important legal battle against the Sarawak state government and IOI Pelita, a subsidiary of the controversial Malaysian oil palm producer IOI.
In a judgement delivered earlier this week, the Miri High Court declared the land leases used by IOI "null and void" as they had been issued by the Sarawak state government in an illegal and unconstitutional way. According to the Borneo Resources Institute Malaysia (BRIMAS), the court granted Long Teran Kanan headman Lah Anyie and his community compensation for the damage done by IOI to their land. The case had been handled by Miri-based lawyer Harrison Ngau.
Last December, a BBC News investigation had uncovered that vast tracts of former rainforest were being bulldozed in the disputed IOI operations area and had found "a scene of absolute devastation: a vast scar on the landscape". Local landowners had complained that their paddy fields and fruit trees had been destroyed by the company.
Court decision discredits Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO)
The Court decision also discredits the so-called Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) which, according to IOI, had found in a probe that the company "had acted responsibly for the management of land in Sarawak". IOI, a palm oil producer serving markets in 65 countries, is a leading RSPO member. Last month, a Friends of the Earths report presented evidence that IOI was responsible for large-scale illegal and unsustainable activities in the Indonesian part of Borneo.
The Bruno Manser Fund welcomes the Miri High Court decision and expects IOI to stop its jungle clearance activities and move out of the disputed lands in the Tinjar region with immediate effect.
[Source: Media Release from Bruno Manser Fund, Switzerland]
FURTHER BACKGROUND:
The end of the jungle?
Borneo tribes 'driven from land'
Monday, March 29, 2010
20 QUESTIONS ON 2012
20 QUESTIONS ON 2012
Meanwhile, here are some thought-provoking quotes from panelists at an upcoming Prophets Conference called 2012: Tipping Point...
"The purpose of the Maya coming to this planet was very specific: to leave behind a definite set of clues and information about the nature and purpose of our planet at this particular time in the solar system and in the galactic field." — José Argüelles
"Please take the growing crisis very seriously and realize that the time for sacred action has come. Plunge deep into sacred practice so that you can connect with the eternal within you and remain calm and joyful and full of passionate compassion through all the shatterings to come." — Andrew Harvey
"Humanity is facing unprecedented, evolutionary changes. It is amazing - out of the famous Mayan prophecy has come the indication that we are facing the end of this world as we know it and the beginning of the new world of 2012. What vision of the future, of the new world, might we see so that we can place our attention upon this vision as a strange attractor to carry us through this critical time?" — Barbara Marx Hubbard
"2012 is definitely not just about one day in 2012; it is about a sea change that probably won’t bear fruit for many decades. But I believe that 2012 could be seen by future historians as a temporal marker of a great renaissance that will raise a submerged continent of consciousness that has been suppressed by Western science and culture." — John Major Jenkins
"One of the predictions concerns how we’re going to have seven days of darkness. When this takes place, a lot of people that don’t have a spiritual basis are going to go nuts. I have been assured that this will not be the end of the world. It really means, according to the Maya, that the earth is going to go through a period of gestation and enter into a new period. I saw in a vision that we’re going to have two suns. We need to get ready." — Flordemayo
"As we complete this apocalyptic passage, we will conceive ourselves, increasingly, as fractal expressions of a unified field of consciousness and sentient aspects of a planetary ecology - the Gaian mind - that is continually changed by our actions, and even our thoughts." — Daniel Pinchbeck
"We have indeed entered a critical time in human history. A tsunami is rapidly building on the horizon. Every person on earth is connected like never before, through the Internet and cell phones. Most of us have come to understand that we are perched on a shore that is threatened by a mounting wave of economic and environmental disaster." — John Perkins
"We live in a provocative, evolving time that promises to impact how we live together on the planet, how we continue as a species, and how we understand ourselves in relation to a larger universe... this is the time to remember how to live in ecstatic relationship with natural forces." — Llyn Roberts
"Today we find ourselves wandering disconsolately between two worlds — one dying and the other struggling to be born. On the one hand, the spiritual and intellectual certainties of the past no longer command our allegiance. On the other, the promises of a more integral worldview, a cosmology of tomorrow — one based on a deeper relationship with nature and with the larger cosmos — require of us a leap of faith few are as yet willing to take. With the future of the human spirit and the future of the planet hanging in the balance, we have no choice but to embrace courage, imagination, and our deepest inner resources." — Richard Tarnas
"Now, we are in those days when many people are talking about 2012: and some of them don’t see the positive side of the Prophecies because they are looking only at the surface of the Prophecies and not at the deeper meaning of the Prophecies." — Miguel Angel Vergara
This Week's Recommended Reading
I haven't spent much time at the computer except to keep tabs on current goings-on. There were four items that caught my attention and which I would like to alert you to by way of recommended reading...
THE PERKASA DISTRACTION
The politics of exclusion is making a return, pushing back against the rising tide of inclusiveness that has spread to both sides of politics.
Later this week, a politician who famously earned himself notoriety by being labelled The Frog for his willingness to switch sides will position himself in the cat-bird seat, as the spearhead of a resurgent Malay rights movement.
There is little doubt that Ibrahim Ali and his newly-formed and speedily-registered Perkasa, with Dr Mahathir Mohamad lending his imprimateur, and the Mahathirian old guard in the likes of Aziz Shamsuddin, Sanusi Junid and others gathering around it, will have some apparent clout and the ability to dominate headlines.
But at what price to national cohesiveness?
[Read the rest here.]
MALAYSIA MUST END ABUSE OF MIGRANT WORKERS
Drawn by promises of jobs in Malaysia, thousands of men and women from Bangladesh, Indonesia, Nepal and elsewhere in the region pay substantial sums to recruitment agents. Once they arrive, they find that much of what their agents told them about their new jobs is untrue. Malaysia’s economy depends on the labor of migrant workers yet the government effectively criminalizes them.
APCO & NAJIB: Beneath the veil of public relations
By Tian Chua
Next Tuesday, March 30, Barisan Nasional parliamentarians will be gearing up to crucify Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim for his comments on Apco. The MPs might think that they are doing the BN government a favour by defending Najib and his high-flying consultancy company.
In the minds of most BN lawmakers, defending the government is equivalent of defending the country. By the same logic, people who criticize the government are simply traitors to Malaysia.
I would like to invite my friends from the other side to think harder, and look harder. In fact, it does not require a lot of effort to find out the connection between Apco and Israel.
[Read the rest here.]
REDEFINING MORALITY
By Raja Petra Kamarudin
"I really don’t care what your ethnic background is. I feel that whatever race we field in this coming by-election is not important. What is important is that it should be a female candidate. Yes, a woman, and not because I love women even though it is true I do. It is because women and not Indians are the neglected lot (and certainly not Malays as PERKASA alleges)."
[Read the rest here.]