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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

South Pacific Forestry & Cultural Abuses Continue

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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises

9/18/96

OVERVIEW & SOURCE by EE

The Islands Business magazine takes a surprisingly strong stance against

Malaysian timber exploitation in the Pacific Islands in their "We Say"

editorial. It is reported that logging continues in the Marovo Lagoon of

the Solomon Islands, a proposed World Heritage Area, despite having been

exposed as illegal two years ago. The Malaysian primary industry

minister's apologist ways are documented, including referring to forest

dwellers as head hunters who must be "civilised". The Malaysian

government's complicity in "rape in the Solomons" is made clear. Following

is a photocopy of the article.

g.b.

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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:

Headline: "Malaysia is now so often held up as a model for Pacific

Islands development that certain official Malaysian attitudes

to the exploitation of indigenous land may be shocking."

Source: Islands Business, We Say section

Date: July 1996

Page 12

It would be an insensitive person indeed who, after living for some time in

Melanesia, remained unaware of the feelings that many indigenous people

have for ancestral and tribal land. Some of these feelings may fall not

far short of worship. Most Melanesian landowners certainly have strong

proprietary feelings of ownership and these nowadays are becoming

translated into terms of what dollar values can be earned from land.

Underlying the commercial aspect are far older elements that have to do

with hereditary right of access, a place of abode, the gathering of food

and materials and the preservation of sacred places.

Westerners who in their ignorance or greed trespass upon those values in a

manner insulting ot land proprietors do so at their peril.

Great land areas of Melanesia remain undeveloped, if that is the right word

to use. This is because of a clash between capitalist developers who want

security of title to land they want as an investment, and customary owners

who are unwilling to surrender customary usage rights as a price they are

required to pay in return for a hard cash premium, rent or royalty.

Many Melanesians--and, of course, the people of other Pacific regions--are

absolutely unwilling to sell their land outright (and who can blame them?).

They are probably unable to do so by law anyway.

Land use and management is a very tricky, sensitive matter. In the Solomon

Islands, it is a particularly serious block to national development.

Logging and prospecting companies have found that out, and also in Papua

New Guinea and less so in Vanuatu.

Malaysia is now so often held up as a model for Pacific Islands development

that certain official Malaysian attitudes to the exploitation of indigenous

land may be shocking. They were displayed recently in the Solomon Islands

by the Malaysian primary industries minister, Data Seri Dr Lim Keng Yaik.

He was there on a tour to explode the myth, invented by journalists and

environmental agencies, that many of the Malaysian logging companies

operating in Melanesia are ruthlessly ripping the heart of forest in the

most damaging ways possible. Quoted by the Solomon Islands Trust, Lim

remarked that none of his country's forest was owned by indigenous people

(not any more, he meant). As for forest dwellers, they were just head

hunters who had to be "civilised."

"Why do they want thousands of hectares of forest land? We give them

sufficient enough for their hunting." What Lim really means is that his

government forcibly takes, not gives, and then gives to its multi-

millionaire logging tycoon mates.

In June, an Agence France-Presse (a French news service) reporter, Mike

Field, was at New Georgia, where the Marovo Lagoon lies as one of the great

natural wonders of the world. The Solomon Islands government officially

wants a World Heritage listing for the lagoon. Busy there, Field found the

Sylvania Logging Company, part of Malaysia's Kumpalan Emas Group. Two

years ago the then Solomons prime minister said Sylvania's logging licence

had been suspended because it had "consistently breached the conditions of

its licences by carrying out illegal forestry practices". It was makinga

mess of Marovo, ravaging the forest, polluting water supplies and

smothering coral with silt.

In June, Field found that Sylvania is still at it, so much so that the

people of Vangunu Island seized chain saws because the Malaysians logged

their land without permission. That is not the only such rape in the

Solomons.

Really, Data Seri Dr Lim Keng Yaik, are you sick in the head?

###RELAYED TEXT ENDS###

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