The Malaysian police will exhume the remains of the late Kelesau Naan who was allegedly murdered.

The Malaysian police will exhume the remains of Kelesau Naan, the late headman of Long Kerong, a Penan village on the upper reaches of the Baram river in Sarawak / East Malaysia. According to the New Straits Times (a newspaper appearing in West Malaysia), Police Commissioner Mohmad Salleh said that the police will apply for a permit to exhume Kelesau's remains so that the cause of his death can be determined.

SAHABAT ALAM MALAYSIA [SAM]
FRIENDS OF THE EARTH, MALAYSIA
21, Lintang Delima 15, 11600 Penang, Malaysia
Tel : (6) 04 - 6596930 Fax : (6) 04 - 6596931

PRESS STATEMENT AUG 27, 2007

 SAM would like to call the attention of the Malaysian Government, both at the Federal and Sarawak level on the latest developments surrounding the two blockades set up by the Sarawak native communities in the middle and upper Baram, Miri Division.

By Greenpeace, Amsterdam / Utrecht

Amsterdam/Utrecht 20 April 2007 – Greenpeace is relieved that laundering illegal timber has become less easy from today. The Board of Appeal of Keurhout ruled today that Keurhout wrongly approved a MTCC(1) certificate as guaranty for legality. This ruling was given in a process instituted by Greenpeace, knowing that timber from Malaysia may have been logged illegally. Keurhout has now been ordered to immediately withdraw the wrongly awarded Keurhout Legal certificate.

PRESS STATEMENT 20 APRIL 2007

STOP THE ENCROACHMENTS! GAZETTE OUR VILLAGES & FOREST RESERVES

We would like to make some clarifications on the five blockades which have been set up by Penan communities in Baram since last week to avoid any misunderstanding on the part of other parties. The villages which are involved in this blockade are Long Sayan and Long Belok in Sungai Apoh, Long Lutin in Sungai Patah, Long Kevok in Sungai Layun, Tutoh and the nomadic group Ba' Bevan in Sungai Si'ang, Tutoh.

For the last two years, Global Response has issued action alerts to support the indigenous Penan in Sarawak, Malaysia, who are determined to stop logging companies from destroying their rainforest home. Most recently we helped form a coalition of 37 international organizations urging investors and banks to refuse financing to Samling, the logging company that is entering Penan traditional territory with the aid of Malaysian police forces.

For updates on the Penan struggle, please see two articles, below.

By Paul Malone 

The Canberra Times, Saturday, 10 March 2007

THE BLOCKADE the Penan had erected looked pitiful in the rain, a few bamboo poles strung together across the muddy logging road that cuts through the rainforest near Long Benalih in the upper Baram River region of Malaysian Sarawak, near the Kalimantan border in Borneo. No one was in sight to man the blockade, nor was there any sign of the police who had knocked it down days earlier, or the men from the giant multinational logging company, Samling, on whose behalf they had acted.

Basel (Switzerland), 8 March 2007

37 non-governmental organizations from 18 countries are asking investors and banks to shun the Malaysian logging giant Samling which was publicly listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange earlier this week. The NGO's appeal is appearing in a quarter page advertisement of the Friday 9 March global edition of the International Herald Tribune under the title "Investing in rainforest destruction: Samling Global Ltd. listing with support from Credit Suisse, HSBC, Macquarie".

Last primary rainforests of Sarawak under immediate danger of destruction

12 February 2007

Samling, the Malaysian logging giant, has started to log the last primary rainforests of the Malaysian state of Sarawak after the police removed a roadblock set up by the local indigenous Penan communities. This was learned from the Borneo Resource Institute BRIMAS, a local NGO based in the city of Miri.

By Tony Thien

Some 3,000 Penan from 11 longhouses in the Belaga district in Sarawak filed a complaint with the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (Suhakam) against a private company engaged in logging, plantation and reforestation activities on a sizeable area of their land.

A Suhakam team which went to the area recently to follow up on the complaint found clear evidence of what one of its commissioners Dr Denison Jayasooria described as "the devastation of forests as far as the eyes can see."

For the past year, Global Response has supported the Penan indigenous people of Malaysia in their determination to stop industrial logging in their territories.  Several Penan communities have set up rustic blockades against logging trucks, and now they are facing police violence. They urgently call on the international community to support their courageous stand against logging in some of Malaysia?s last remaining tropical rainforests. Too many Penan martyrs have already lost their lives defending their Native Customary Rights and their rainforest territories.

In a letter to Jewson Ltd., the British lumber company, 17 headmen and leaders of the Penan people of Sarawak / Malaysia have asked it to stop purchasing timber from their territories. "We would like to draw your attention to the fact that by purchasing timber from the Samling group you are making yourself part of the crimes committed against our communities", the Penan have written to Jewson?s managing director Peter Hindle in the letter published today. "Despite our repeated protests, Samling does not respect our boundaries and disregards our native customary rights.

On March 15, the United Nations General Assembly voted 170–4 to create a new Human Rights Council, effectively dissolving the oft-criticized Commission on Human Rights. Candidates for the Council will need to be elected by an absolute majority of 96 votes in order to secure a position, and once elected members can serve a maximum of two consecutive terms.