Malyasian plantation corporations invading brutally colonized West Papua
Not contented with continuously destroying our remaining million years Forest Reserves with all its glorious wildlife and ancestral Indigenous Customary Landrights (as under Native Customary Rights i.e. NCR) in Malaysia, Malaysian Capitalist Palm Oil/Logging Corporations are expanding very aggressively into Indonesia, which includes West Papua.
Despite that the Indigenous West Papuans have been and are suffering from being continuously being colonized brutally by the Indonesian Govt. As reported by the media (see The Star, Indonesia is the flavour: Malaysian oil palm plantation companies are flocking to Indonesia, and more collaboration between the two countries is expected, 02/07/07) these greedy land-grabbing of the Indonesia's traditional Indigenous population customary landrights and forests - including in Forest Reserves, by the Malaysian palm oil/logging corporations will accelerate in the coming years.
Some of the Malaysian multinational corporations involved are both Indigenous and non-Indigenous owned, which include Golden Hope Plantations Bhd., Synergy Drive Bhd, Asiatic Development Bhd and Kepong Bhd (KLK). As the chairman of and CEO of KLK declared in its 2006 annual report:
Our objective is to increase our land bank (in Indonesia) and this strategy is aggressively being pursued.
Moreover, the intensive target of oil palm's hectarage of plantations in Indonesia is as below:
West Papua: Total of 3 million hectare
Sumatra : Total of ~8 million hectare
Kalimantan:Total of 7.5 million hectare
Sulawesi: Total of 1.5 million hectare
Now, these selfish corporations are playing with the new language game of producing “Sustainable Biofuels/Biodiesel” such as declared in the same media above, by the former joint CEO of Asiatic Development Bhd:
...both existing and new plantation players in Indonesia were aggressively expanding their plantation estates to meet with the exponential growth in CPO demand in the world market for both food and biodiesel.
Or as the major player in Sarawak of Borneo Malaysia, Sarawak Plantation Bhd. (SPB) that owns 13 oil palm plantations and with a registered net profit of RM63 million in 2006 claimed:
....SPB plans to expand its plantation hectarage through various strategies such as....participating in native customary rights (NCR) land development on a joint venture...We will do this in an environmental-friendly manner.......(see The Star, Sarawak Plantation to raise RM90mil via IPO:Main board listing scheduled for end-August, 30/06/07).
When contacted, World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) – Malaysia's spokesperson claimed that they are not addressing this critical issue since they have to be selective in pursuing causes for campaigning due to financial constraint despite that many of their patrons are from among the most powerful and the richest of the elite class that includes the Sultan (King) of Perak of Malaysia, and many other titled ones. Further, the Heart of Borneo Declaration as initiated proudly by WWF-Malaysia and signed on the 12/02/07 by the Governments of Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei does not apparently cover protection for all those expanded areas for the palm oil/logging plantations as has been mentioned above. Further, WWF-Malaysia also praises the Malaysian Govt. for supposedly doing a good job in their very glossy magazine, Green Heart (issue Feb 2007):
Needless to say, we are very fortunate to be in a developing country where safeguarding the environment is one of its main policies. Today, after 50 years of life and progress, 63% of Malaysian forests still remain.
This is indeed ironic despite that the Swiss-based Bruno Manser Foundation (BMF) has reported that 90% of Sarawak of Malaysian Borneo's rainforest has disappeared. As has been happening elsewhere in Malaysia. And in addition to such ironic injustice, the traditional communities of the highly scenic highlands of Upper Baram, Sarawak including the highly traditional Penans, have been and are still fighting bravely by risking their lives and livelihood, the Capitalist Malaysian multinational logging and plantations (palm oil/coffee/Acasia etc) corporations that are continuously destroying their ancestral customary landrights and customary forests that include our ancestral forest reserves which also consist of glorious and diverse wildlife. Obviously, such area is not selected as significant enough to be saved as of all those Indonesia's future plantation hectarage targeted above for aggressive expansion that includes the long-brutalized colonized West Papua!!!!! Please see information from West Papua Action, Dublin, Ireland below.