Malaysia

For decades, the presence of communist insurgents kept Malaysia’s northern frontier free from exploitation. Too dangerous to open up for tourism or development, the Belum-Temenggor forest stood in pristine splendour as the nation built superhighways and superstructures, and extracted timber from other forests.

Malaysia, together with Indonesia, is the world's leading producer of crude palm oil for export, at a high cost, though. According to a 2005 Friends of the Earth report, 87 per cent of recent deforestation in the country has occurred to make way for palm-oil plantations. Since Malaysian rainforests are some of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet, clearing these areas poses serious threat to countless species of plants and animals.

In Malaysia, women plantation workers appear to have been neglected in the Government’s plans to eradicate poverty and enhance the status of women. The progress achieved so far in empowering women has been unequal. Women plantation workers still lag behind, since they are unable to free themselves from the vicious cycle of poverty they find themselves in.

Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) is one of the world's largest pulp and paper companies. The company is responsible for large-scale deforestation of Indonesia's forests. APP has also generated a number of not-yet-settled conflicts with local communities in Indonesia. Forthcoming research by Rully Syumanda, Friends of the Earth Indonesia/WALHI's forest campaigner and Rivani Noor of the Community Alliance for Pulp Paper Advocacy (CAPPA) documents the company's grim record in Sumatra.

The Penan in Sarawak have been struggling for their rights to land and forests for more than twenty years, not only by setting up logging road blockades, but also by legally claiming their Native Customary Rights (NCR) in court. In spite of their ongoing resistance against logging and plantations on their native land, the Sarawak government and its concessionaries --logging and plantation companies-- continue to disrespect the Penan's rights on their land.

The dark green and yellow Great Tit (Parus major) is a bird species that makes its home in Malaysia's coastal mangrove swamps and both are disappearing as the country redoubles it attempts to boost agriculture. Commercial farmers are turning swamps in Kuala Selangor, 90 km (56 miles) north-west of the capital, Kuala Lumpur, into shrimp farms and threatening a delicate ecosystem that is home to hundreds of species.

On 18 October 2004, Samling Plywood, the Malaysian timber corporation, was granted a Certificate for Forest Management under the Malaysian Timber Certification Council (MTCC) for the alleged sustainable logging of one of Sarawak's last remaining contiguous areas of primary rainforest.

Representatives of the Murut, the Kadazandusun, and the Rungus, and some 30 more tribes coming from the remote region of Tongod, traversed in July of this year northern Borneo to reach the gleaming office of Sabah’s Deputy Chief Minister of Land, Datuk Lajim Haji Ukin at the capital city of Kota Kinabalu. The group was there to demand the government to abide by its own laws, recognize native rights to protect and manage their natural resources, and halt reallocation of lands to logging and plantation corporations.

Local communities from all over Malaysia reject the country’s attempt to greenwash its timber industry. During the COP-7 meeting of the Biodiversity Convention in Malaysia in February, representatives for 253 indigenous, forest based communities presented a statement describing the Malaysian Timber Certification Council scheme, MTCC, as a scheme that "has caused, and continues to cause, the further marginalisation of our communities". The recently launched campaign is ongoing, and signatures from additional communities rejecting MTCC are still coming in.

The Malaysian Timber Certification Council scheme, MTCC, is set up to meet demands from the Western markets for a green stamp on tropical timber, and MTCC has been a pioneer among the national certification schemes from tropical countries to really invest in getting acceptance from the European market. Malaysian delegations, headed by the Minister of Primary Industries, have several times visited Europe, and the active promotion of their own scheme has worked.

In 2002, the Malaysian organization Tenaganita, together with Pesticide Action Network-Asia Pacific launched a study that confirmed that women plantation workers were being poisoned by the use of highly toxic pesticides, especially paraquat. At the launching of the "Study of Pesticides Poisoning in the Plantations", Tenaganita Director, Dr. Irene Fernandez said that “If the Malaysian government had, through its enforcement agencies the Department of Occupational Safety and Health and the Pesticides Board, effectively implemented the laws the women would not have suffered."

On October 16, 2003, Irene Fernandez, the Director of Tenaganita (a women’s non-governmental organization based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia) was sentenced to 12 months imprisonment by the Magistrates Court for the Memorandum on "Abuse , Torture and Dehumanized Treatment of Migrant Workers in Detention Centres". The memorandum had been finalized and sent to relevant authorities and the media in August 1995.