Published in Earth Times
March 2001
BRUNO AND THE BLOWPIPES
Who will determine the future of Sarawak's Penan?
by Paul Spencer Sochaczewski © 2001
Sarawak, Malaysia
Bruno Manser has disappeared in Borneo and is feared dead.
Manser, 47, was last seen in May 2000 in the isolated village of
Bareo in the Malaysian state of Sarawak, close to the border with
Indonesia. The Swiss had illegally entered Sarawak to rejoin his
tribal friends the Penan, with whom Manser had spent some six years
fighting the timber operators that natives claim are destroying
their forest home.
I've met Manser several times. We are not close, but I respect his
understanding of the realpolitik that is at the heart of most fights
between native peoples and paternalistic governments.
He achieved worldwide recognition from 1984-1990 when he lived in
the rainforest with the semi-nomadic Penan of Sarawak. Malaysian
officials saw him as a fugitive and a provacateur and called him
an "enemy of the state number one." Manser constantly
avoided arrest with the panache of a Swiss Robin Hood. When he left
Sarawak, through Brunei, he returned to Switzerland to create the
non-profit Bruno Manser Fonds. In 1999 he returned to Sarawak and
paraglided onto the front lawn of Sarawak Chief Minister Tan Sri
Abdul Taib Mahmud. Manser offered a truce in exchange for the government
creating a biosphere reserve for the Penan. The Swiss man with the
impish grin and John Lennon glasses was deported.
Manser has arguably been the most potent catalyst for media coverage
of the fight by the Penan, and other Sarawak natives, to protect
their forests against what they say are insensitive governments
and greedy timber barons.
Defensive Sarawak government officials note that 95% of the state's
substantial oil revenue goes to federal coffers, leaving Sarawak
little choice but to earn money from natural products, of which
timber is by far the most profitable. "Where are we to get
money except through the forest," asks Dato James Wong, former
Sarawak Minister of Tourism and Local Government and one of the
state's leading timber concessionaires.
Malaysia is the world's leading exporter, by far, of tropical logs,
tropical sawn wood, and tropical veneer, and second, after Indonesia,
a far larger country, of tropical plywood.
According to Bruno Manser Fonds, more than 70% of Sarawak's rainforest
has been cut during the past 20 years. Today Malaysian companies
run timber operations and plywood mills as far afield as Guyana,
Suriname, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands according to
a report by Nigel Sizer of World Resources Institute and Dominiek
Plouvier, an independent forestry consultant.
I served in the United States Peace Corps in Sarawak, not too far
from where Bruno has disappeared. For my job (and pleasure) I travelled
to isolated longhouses, occasionally running into Penan, who appeared
like a breath of wind, gratefully accepted some tobacco or salt,
and then went about their business.
During those admittedly idyllic days we would throw a circular fishing
net into rivers and come up with more than enough fish for dinner.
We would go out at night to hunt wild boar and more often than not
return with a hairy pig on our shoulders. The rivers were clean,
and jungle gibbons hooted their morning call behind the longhouses.
On subsequent trips back to Sarawak I was angry by the desolation
of the landscape by timber operators, and heard complaints from
dozens of people in dozens of longhouses. Their homes were being
destroyed and they weren't getting anything for it. Fishing and
hunting was terrible. The rivers were dangerous places, muddy and
filled with debris from timber operations. I visited Penans who
had been resettled into government built longhouses, ugly structures
with standard government issue architecture similar to army barracks
or timber camp housing. Tin roofs amplified the heat, making the
residences uninhabitable during the day. The Penan I saw were listless,
with vacant eyes. True, they now had access to basic health care
and simple schools, but it seemed as if all the energy had been
sucked from their thin frames.
When I discussed these issues with Malaysian officials I got a common
defensive response, basically, "don't tell us what to do, we
know what's best for the Penan and the forests."
"Look at this map," notes Chris Elliott, director of the
WWF-World Wide Fund for Nature Forests for Life Campaign. He points
to an amorphous shaped illustration published in the Bruno Manser
Fonds newsletter that indicates the territory of nomadic Penan and
remaining virgin forest in Sarawak. "Bruno backed the Sarawak
authorities into a corner by telling them what they should do. Even
the slightest whiff of Western lecturing will put them on the defensive,"
he adds, noting that you'll find similar conflicts and reactions
in places like British Columbia in Canada, parts of Australia, Indonesia
and Brazil.
Perhaps it was a sloppy tactic - using western style confrontation
to get policy changes in an Asian country.
Certainly, Malaysian officials resent being told what to do by pesky
foreigners.
During the height of Manser's long Sarawak escapade in the 1980s,
Malaysia's Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamed had this testy exchange
of correspondence with young Darrell Abercrombie from Surrey, England.
Using his best penmanship, the boy wrote:
"I am 10 years old and when I am older I hope to study animals
in the tropical rain forests. But if you let the lumber companys
[sic] carry on there will not be any left. And millions of Animals
will die. Do you think that is right just so one rich man gets another
million pounds or more. I think it is disgraceful."
The Prime Minister replied on August 15, 1987:
"Dear Darrell, It is disgraceful that you should be used by
adults for the purpose of trying to shame us because of our extraction
of timber from our forests.
"For the information of the adults who use you I would like
to say that it is not a question of one rich man making a million
pounds.…
"The timber industry helps hundreds of thousands of poor people
in Malaysia. Are they supposed to remain poor because you want to
study tropical animals?….
"When the British ruled Malaysia they burnt millions of acres
of Malaysian forests so that they could plant rubber…. Millions
of animals died because of the burning. Malaysians got nothing from
the felling of the timber. In addition when the rubber was sold
practically all the profit was taken to England. What your father's
fathers did was indeed disgraceful.
"If you don't want us to cut down our forests, tell your father
to tell the rich countries like Britain to pay more for the timber
they buy from us….
"If you are really interested in tropical animals, we have
huge National Parks where nobody is allowed to fell trees or kill
animals….
"I hope you will tell the adults who made use of you to learn
all the facts. They should not be too arrogant and think they know
how best to run a country. They should expel all the people living
in the British countryside and allow secondary forests to grow and
fill these new forests with wolves and bears etc. so you can study
them before studying tropical animals.
"I believe strongly that children should learn all about animals
and love them. But adults should not teach children to be rude to
their elders."
* * *
What might have happened to Manser?
Perhaps the Malaysian security forces finally caught him and left
him for compost in the rainforest. That way the authorities would
have saved themselves an embarrassingly visible deportation or trial.
Another possibility, which I hope is the case, is that Manser has
gone walkabout and is hanging out with his Penan buddies. Perhaps
he got bored with Switzerland, perhaps he felt that he could do
more for their cause by advising them close up. Perhaps he is planning
a large media coup.
But Newsweek has reported that four Penan-led search parties have
not turned up any traces of Manser, and John Kuenzli, secretary
of the Bruno Manser Fonds, says, "We are resigned that if Bruno
Manser were still alive, he would have been found." Perhaps
Bruno's fate is destined to become an unsolved Asian mystery, like
the 1967 disappearance of Thai silk entrepreneur Jim Thompson in
Malaysia's Cameroon Highlands or Michael Rockefeller's disappearance
in the Asmat region of New Guinea.
* * *
And what will happen to the approximately 9,000 Penan, of whom about
300 are jungle wanderers?
Certainly change is inevitable for the Penan and the thousands of
other, generally more sophisticated, indigenous people of Sarawak..
Who has the blueprint for that change?
Several years ago I consulted James Wong Kim Min.
Dato James was concurrently the Sarawak State Minister of Tourism
and Local Government and one of the state's biggest timber tycoons.
James Wong loved to talk with foreigners about the Penan, whom the
foreign press has idealized as a group of innocent, down-trodden,
blowpipe wielding, loin-clothed people who are wise in the ways
of the forest but hopelessly naive when faced with modern Malaysian
politics.
"I met with Bruno's Penans in the upper Limbang [River],"
he said. "I asked the Penan who will help you if you're sick?
Bruno?" Here Wong laughed. "The Penans now realize they've
been exploited. I tell them the government is there to help them.
But I ask them how can I see you if you've blocked the road that
I've built for you?"
I asked if he had a message for his critics.
"If [the west] can do as well as we have done and enjoy life
as much as we do then they can criticize us. We run a model nation.
We have twenty-five races and many different religions living side
by side without killing each other. Compare that to Bosnia or Ireland.
We've achieved a form of Nirwana, a utopia."
I explained my experience with Penan who had been encouraged by
generous government incentives to resettle into longhouses. How
their natural environment had been hammered, how their faces were
devoid of spirit and energy, how they had seemingly tumbled even
further down the Sarawak social totem pole.
In reply, Wong lectured me, as I have been lectured by numerous
Asian officials when I raised similar concerns. In effect, he said
"We just want our cousins the naked Penan to enjoy the same
benefits we civilized folk enjoy."
"We are very unfairly criticized by the west," Wong added.
"As early as 1980 I was concerned about the future of the Penans."
He read me a poem he had written:
"O Penan - Jungle wanderers of the Tree
What would the future hold for thee?....
Perhaps to us you may appear deprived and poor
But can Civilization offer anything better?....
And yet could Society in good conscience
View your plight with detached indifference
Especially now we are an independent Nation
Yet not lift a helping hand to our fellow brethren?
Instead allow him to subsist in Blowpipes and clothed in Chawats
[loincloths]
An anthropological curiosity of Nature and Art?
Alas, ultimately your fate is your own decision
Remain as you are - or cross the Rubicon!"
* * *
Has Manser be successful?
From a public awareness point of view he has certainly directed
considerable media attention to the plight of the Penan and other
tribal groups.
But he failed at his major objective: getting the Malaysian government
to declare a biosphere reserve to protect the Penan and their forest.
In an article in the newsletter of the Bruno Manser Fonds, the activist
admitted, "success in Sarawak is less than zero."
Chris Elliott, who met Manser several times, agrees that the future
isn't bright for the Penan and their forest home. "There is
severe pressure from unsustainable logging, forest fires and conversion
to plantations," he says.
Manser had a cautious relationship with the conservation mainstream.
No doubt he felt that groups like WWF were too soft.
"We differ on the means," Elliott says. "WWF tried
to work in partnership with the government and had some success
- a few protected areas were established, there was training of
staff, and new wildlife legislation was created. But neither Bruno
nor WWF succeeded in getting the authorities to create a biosphere
reserve, Elliott notes, adding that WWF now has little activity
in Sarawak.
Nevertheless, history isn't written by people who follow the rules.
Manser sensed a major injustice and challenged the status quo in
which his friends the Penan were paternalistically treated as the
bottom of the Sarawak social totem pole.
So, how will the Swiss be judged by history? As an obstinate fighter
for a lost cause or a romantic visionary for a victorious change
in policy?
What motivated this man from rich Switzerland to live six years
in the forest of Borneo with virtually nothing that most people
would consider essential? He learned to process food from the starchy
sago palm, learned to hunt with a blowpipe, learned how to live
a life that was simultaneously ridiculously hard and unimaginably
rewarding.
Manser wrote of his epiphany: "It happened in a prison in Lucerne.
I was imprisoned there for three months because I had refused to
learn how to shoot at human beings. One day I suddenly perceived
the space inside the four walls of my cell...how my body acted as
a biosphere…to be so small and yet so incredibly rich and important…I
flew out of the prison, over to my parents in Basel, to my friends
in Amsterdam…I flew on and left our solar system. Then I turned
around and flew back. There I sat, back in my body. Since then I
carry this certainty in me: everyone of us is nothing and simultaneously
the most important creature in its space and place. Indispensable
from the first to the last breath. So when people say: 'don't be
active, it's just a waste of time, it won't help anyway', then you
already know that they're scared of losing profit and would even
sell their own grandmother. Does it have to be the children today
who day say out loud to the politicians and the economists: support
what is real and true, avoid what is bad!"
A passage by T.E. Lawrence comes to mind:
All men dream: but not equally./
Those who dream by night in the dusty /
recesses of their minds wake in the day/
to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers/
of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with
open eyes, to make it possible.
|
