FOREIGN NGOS & SABAH'S LOGGING SCANDAL

By : NILE BOWIE

IN MALAYSIAN Borneo, home to a small of a world's oldest rainforests as well as an form of biodiverse plant as well as animal species, logging will always be a sensitive issue. Controversy has recently surrounded Sabah's Chief Minister Musa Aman over allegations of embezzling $ 90 million (RM 279 million) from years of bootleg logging operations in a state.

The Bruno Manser Fund (BMF), a Swiss-based rainforest advocacy group, has filed a criminal complaint against UBS Bank over ties with Aman through a number of bank accounts he binds with UBS in Hong Kong as well as Zurich.

BMF claims that Michael Chia, an join forces with of Aman, orderly vast cash payments from joist companies with logging interests in Sabah to UBS bank accounts in Hong Kong, that were used to send income to Aman's sons in Australia as well as a senior central in Sabah.

The funds have been purported to be kickbacks from Malaysian joist operators paid to a Chief Minister in lapse for being allowed to exploit pleasant hard wood logging concessions.

Sarawak Report, a London-based whistleblower website, published bank statements as well as alternative papers implicating Chief Minister Aman as well as his brother, Malaysia's Foreign Minister Anifah Aman, with crime as well as income laundering.

The report, that cites unknown sources, leaked documents, as well as "insider claims," accuses Attorney General Abdul Gani Patail of b! locking further review by a Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) as well as highlights a close family connections in between Gani as well as Aman.

Swiss authorities have declared their willingness to freeze a unlawful resources of both Musa Aman as well as Sarawak Chief Minister Taib Mahmud (also indicted of piracy as well as misconduct) if Malaysia requests legal-assistance in investigating a case.

Amid calls for Aman to renounce from his post, a Sabah Forestry Department has called allegations of drawn out bootleg logging in a state "wild as well as baseless," adding that a dissemination of such allegations would equates to a dump in joist sales as well as equates to Sabah's forests to lose mercantile value:

"We have reason to believe a unfounded allegations have been politically motivated as well as not driven by any adore for a environment. The allegations have been therefore groundless as well as done with bad intention to discredit a sacrifices done by a state supervision to grasp good timberland governance as well as tolerable timberland supervision in a shortest time possible, despite a economic, monetary as well as social challenges.

Short-term licenses that equates to tremendous repairs to a sourroundings have been being drastically phased out as well as Sabah's timberland supervision credibility is during a top an open-book truth whereby logging as well as timberland supervision areas have been all open to third-party as well as NGO scrutiny."

While a Sabah Forestry Department has come to a invulnerability of Aman, it has acknowledged small-scale cases of bootleg logging within a forests, that have been in no way near a scale as well as extent as allegedly reported. Press statements released by a Sabah Forestry Department explain that if allegations by a Bruno Manser Fund as well as Sarawak Report were in truth accurate, it would i! mply tha t during slightest 1 million cubic meters of joist were illegally felled, representing a land mass of 50,000 acres, or 50 percent of a joist produced from Sabah's forests in 2011.

Given a enormity of a bootleg felling allegedly taking place in Sabah, it is bewildering how satellites images have unsuccessful to uphold these claims. One would assume that local environmental groups as well as NGOs would certainly take notice of pillage upon such a massive scale.

Interestingly enough, Sabah-based NGOs have upheld a Sabah Forestry Department's moves to increase a volume of stable areas in a territory, namely a northern section of a Gunung Rara Forest Reserve to safeguard a secure medium for Malaysia's largest orangutan population. Bernama's Aug 2012 article "Sabah NGOs Support Protection Forest Move" states:

Founder of LEAP (Land Empowerment Animals People) Cynthia Ong combined that "nationally as well as regionally, Sabah was emerging as a personality in pulling a bounds in supervision of healthy ecosystem services, as well as for treating forests as stores of water, CO as well as biodiversity rather than only as joist sources." She combined that there have been still a number of issues that a NGOs wish to address with a Department, "but this is a sort of shift that you do wish to see."

Sabah's Forestry Department argues that given Reduced Impact Logging (RIL) has been introduced, third party auditors who have overseen a issuance of long-term logging licenses given 2010 would have rescued such vast scale bootleg felling.

The department points out that Musa Aman led Sabah's appearance in a Great Apes Succeed Project (GRASP) in suitability to UNESCO, that halted logging to protect a healthy medium of several thousand orangutans during a detriment of approximately RM 4 billion in intensity logging revenue. Sabah additionally boasts 1.3 million hecta! res of T otally Protected Area Reserves (TPAS), accounting for approximately 20 percent of a state's total landmass.

Under a administration department of Musa Aman, a issuance of short-term logging licenses have begun being phased out in suitability with a counsel dump in timberland income to safeguard that ecosystems have been given a chance to come to hold up from industrial felling. The Press Statement released by Sabah's Forestry Department additionally states:

At slightest 800,000 hectares of Sabah's forests have been to a little extent or entirely approved underneath assorted internationally recognized systems such as a Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), Malaysian Timber Certification Scheme (MTCS), or a Pan European Forest Scheme (PEFC).

This additionally covers a Sabah Foundation with during slightest 250,000 hectares of entirely approved as well as 150,000 hectares to a little extent approved forest. Many more timberland areas have been being earmarked for acceptance as Sabah has set 2014 as a year for all prolonged term licensed areas to be entirely certified.

The process of acceptance equates to eccentric third party auditing upon a ground. If such an allegation was true, because does Sabah go upon to attract a courtesy of certifying bodies as well as NGOs, who wish to be a partners as well as to support us in obtaining verifiable as well as certifiable good governance?

It is not mislaid to a universe that Sabah is a first pleasant region in a total universe to have a tract of rainforest approved underneath a Gold Standard of a FSC in 1997 i.e. Dermakot Forest Reserve. This is a model area not only for Malaysia but a pleasant world.

If these statements prove to be accurate, afterwards it would mean Chief Minister Musa Aman has actually overseen an altogether increase in areas of Totally Protected Area Reserve! s (TPAS) . Logically, if these allegations have been baseless, afterwards a purported $ 90 million in embezzled funds have possibly not originated from a bootleg felling of timber, or have been simply non-existent.

Other reliable cases of crime as well as piracy have led to many Malaysians being quite susceptible to disinformation, however it is insane to deny a possibility.

Chief Minister Aman would regain open trust by making every effort to be transparent as well as cooperative with any investigations to prove his innocence, any attempts to inhibit exploration will expected be publically interpreted as suspicious. Indeed, cases of bootleg felling of joist do exist as well as crime is a single of a categorical drivers of deforestation in Sarawak, that but delay threatens a fragile ecosystem as well as a delicate way of hold up in inland tribal communities.

The claims as well as census data provided by Sabah's Forestry Department in truth prove that a state's leaders commend their responsibility to maintain a necessary balance in between mercantile growth as well as ecological preservation.

In a increasingly globalized world, growth has often come during a expense of uprooting inland communities with small apply oneself for biodiversity as well as a spiritual significance of directed towards land areas hold by inland tribes. In this respect, Malaysia is not but a shortcomings, but it is critical to commend that state care has begun taking stairs in a right direction.

The impressionability of a Malaysian middle class has turn self-evident by a control of those looking a shift in government, who have been penetrating to display their willingness to reject a domestic investiture in Putrajaya but scrutinizing a (often foreign) sources of their claims.

Upon upon vacation a website of Swiss-based NGO, a Bruno Manser Fund, ! a single finds it quite curious that a classification has not provided a monetary statements or a list of a sponsors, that it states have been "private individuals, foundations as well as comparison businesses" mocking for an classification set upon exposing environmental institutions that lack transparency.

Upon upon vacation a website's headlines portal, a organization's status as a "rainforest advocacy group" is many curious, as it clearly endorses non-environmental campaigns such as Ambiga Sreenevasan's Bersih Movement in further to "condemning" a hearing of domestic antithesis personality Anwar Ibrahim.

Additionally, a site links to Malaysiakini, a nation's many pro-opposition domestic headlines website, an annual target of $ 100,000 (RM 317,260) from a US-based National Endowment for Democracy, saved by a United States Government.

As Malaysia approaches an upcoming general election, domestic mud slinging as turn a member in every issue, with any side attempting to make use of any event to discredit any other.

Sarawak Report as well as a associate Radio Free Sarawak have been anarchist media outlets formed in a United Kingdom founded by British investigative publisher Clare Rewcastle Brown, as well as have been openly hostile to a Barisan Nasional-led state governments of Sabah & Sarawak.

Brown has demonstrated a clear disposition by negligently exaggerating assorted claims, alluding to isolated incidents of joist workers raping tribal women, that Brown outrageously insinuates is a one after another policy of Prime Minister Najib Razak'! s govern ment.

It is a small measure of unsteadiness that while Clare Rewcastle Brown as well as her classification focus upon discrediting care in Malaysia, her own brother-in-law, former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, partnered with a United States' to invade as well as occupy Iraq during a expense of over a million of civilian lives.

In conclusion, a Malaysian officials indicted of laundering income contingency make all efforts to be transparent as well as to go upon to broach a kind of environmental policy that respects ecosystems, biodiversity, as well as inland people.

Barisan Nasional have prolonged regarded Sabah & Sarawak as their loyal domestic stronghold, as well as it would appear that members of a antithesis as well as their affiliates have been attempting to make use of all equates to to discredit a ruling governments of those states prior to a highly anticipated general elections.

While a domestic member behind allegations of crime as well as resource grabbing contingency not be ignored, authentic crime does exist as well as committed efforts contingency be taken to examine indicted people if these people have been innocent, afterwards their exoneration is a preordained conclusion.


(NOTE :Nile Bowie is an eccentric bard as well as photojournalist formed in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; he regularly contributes to Tony Cartalucci's Land Destroyer Report as well as Professor Michel Chossudovsky's Global Research Twitter: @NileBowie)

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