EXPLOSIVE NEW DOCUMENTARY - The Rainforest Tribunal

I pledge to tell the truth nothing but the truth if you agree please raise your right hand the tribunal is hereby constituted and I declare the first rainforest tribunal in barel open a video clip has been submitted as evidence to the tribunal please screen the first piece of evidence in the late 20th century the Malaysian state of sarak on the island of Borneo became the world's largest exporter of tropical Timber millions of hectares of pristine tropical rainforest were logged against the resi

stance of sovak indigenous peoples the destruction of sovak rainforest was overseen by one man who reigned more than 30 years TB Mahmud during T mahmud's tenure as chief minister and Governor he and his closest family members became incredibly wealthy Swiss environmentalist buam Manza assisted the indigenous penan community in their long fight against deforestation Manza went missing in sarvak in 2000 the Bruno Manza has since continued to campaign against deforestation and corruption in the tim

ber industry T mahmud's daughter sued the Bruno Manza for linking her wealth to the destruction of the Borneo rainforest to bring out the truth the Bruno Manza for organized a symbolic event with investigators witness hearings and a high-profile expert jury the rainforest tribunal I call the first witness to the stand Dr Claude Martin is biologist member of the club of Rome and former director of WWF International Sak effectively became the largest Timber exporter in the world up to 90% now of t

he former sarakan tropical forest area is devastated and prone to desertification as a matter of fact Bruna manz's case became public first through some articles in the German geom magazine then taken up by National Geographic magazine by BBC and others and this created effectively the pressure on tropical forest producers the Malaysian authorities reacted quite aggressively particularly at a Rio conference in 1992 where prime minister mahatir was pointing at us and said who are you to tell us w

hat to do with our forest so uh the reaction was was quite uh Vivid and and many organizations indigenous people's organization and conservation organizations were not welcome in in Sarawak anymore we had project there which we had to disband are there any questions from the Shiri M also told Bruno Mana that all countries in the world have the same right to use their natural resources for their own benefit and development at their discretion do you think M was right well at that time probably in

Malaysia even people would not have said that he is right because mahaa did not in a proper sense represent the will of its own people because this was a in a sense a totalitarian regime particularly in Sarawak in this sense I'm sorry to say but mahad was wrong these top rulers had a huge impact on what happens to tropical forest the example of saravak stands out globally as probably the worst example of crime on tropical forest thank you thank you Mr Martin for testifying thank you I call the

next witness Robin hury Tennison to the stand yeah the top Palm expert and ratan expert in the world John dransfield I sent him into the rainforest with a panan called lello 16-year-old boy and he worked for 3 weeks he came out at the end having raised the number of known rattans from 10 to 120 when he came back to base camp he said to me may I spend another week please because uh Lelo knows so much and I want to spend a time asking him to identify the plants they returned after that week having

identified 200 rattans and Palms not by Latin names but by their use their value whether they were poisonous or not whether they were edible whether they could be used for making furniture or whatever and John said to me as indeed every other scientist said to me as he left at the end I am not the expert the PanAm are the experts fore fore foree so I quickly learned that the key to understand the biology of the forest that was its people it is a misconception that the indigenous peoples drives

deforestation it has been successfully championed by governments and by the private sector with an interest in concessions AGR bus industrial logging and hydrop power are the main drivers of deforestation so with all respect industrial scale Timber extraction has proven detrimental to indigenous peoples all over the world there's a word for this echoside defined as a mass destruction of nature by humans echoside can threaten people's cultural and physical existence uh what is the Imp impact of u

h palm oil which is a main driver of the Malaysian economy as well uh to the sustainability of rainforest yes uh I believe at the moment Malaysia and Indonesia is producing about 80% of the world's palm oil so economically it's very important in these areas as a consequence Borneo now ranks among the most most vulnerable biodiversity hotspots globally biodiversity wise o pal plantations are like deserts once you convert to oil palm there is nothing left of the original rainforests there's a numb

er of of other impacts not only on the environment but also on the livelihoods of uh humans so all Palm plantations are followed by a suite of problems which we know as problems with child labor forced labor minimum pay problems with pesticides and the drinking water uh siltation of rivers and of course it's a major concern for climate as such huge areas are being cleared for par o plantations Environmental Services once provided by the forest are gone a penon put it like this an oil palm Planta

tion is devoid of life all the spirits are gone it is this spee spe foreign spe fore spe fore fore foree fore spe foreign spe for Secretary General United Nations fore spe in the 80s the are people who came into our territories we started showing the encro into our forest since then the plan start their resistance do the blockade the blockades mean that we are not against any development from the government we want the development but we have to choose the company is not the development that we

want people often do not understand what blockage are it is a peaceful way to prevent the Ling companies to encroach into our land the plan people erected the dozen of blocket in 19 F7 later on hundreds of people get arrested in 1991 and 1992 I was helping kok uh to facilitate the last long blockade of the panan in bajang I also facilitated local and international media to report on this blockade like CNN BBC ABC and many more I also guided A Member of Parliament from Canada to the blockade this

was when the secret police came knocking on my door at one midnight in the town of Mary I was quickly put in the local police cell a few days later I was driven 9 hours to cooing prison in handcuffs I was blindfolded for once I was feeling really scared in my life like it's chicken to the slaughter house I was put in solitary confinement for about a month there I was interrogated night and day at one moment I thought I lost my mind clearly the strategy of the authorities is to harass and intimi

date local communities we local activists receed constant harassment and intimidation by the government many many people from the blockades were arrested and put in jail Nomad groups who have never been in the city were put in jail as well how has been in jail affected me it has made me even more determined to continue the struggle because I know I believe honestly in my hearts of hearts that what we have done is not at all wrong defending our own land from being destroyed by logging any activis

t who actually is for people's rights for indigenous people's rights asking questions organizing people doing what rightfully should have been done by the government should never ever be uh a Target there's a long list of people who are on The Black List who cannot go in when when you're are critical of the state government I think it's okay to descend I think it's okay to be critical of any government because no government is perfect you will you will bound to make mistakes but it's good if you

can hear this critical input from a variety of actors we expect governments to uh take up their Duty and obligation to protect our rights but many times we know government speak the right thing but do the wrong thing right the role of any government or head of government is to actually facilitate rights protection the question is why are the indigenous people as our village headman said why do I need to do a blockade we don't need to do the reason people do blockade is out of desperation for a

failure of government to do what is rightfully their duty to its citizen you can ask any indigenous leader do you want development they say of course I want schools I want roads I want clean water I think until today there's some Villages here who are still struggling to get clean water failure to ensure those basic amenities come in is also because they never spoke to the indigenous leaders on how to find Solutions see see that the different the color of the water see the clear ones come from S

u M come from the park so it's a be clear very clear and the other one is from the tutu River why is look muddy look like white coffee it's because of Toto River out River they all Ling activities this is our land this part is a farm a lot of Fruit Tree on this land before this belong to the bran people go on wel Plantation soon 1980 until 1992 we start a peaceful blocket and peaceful demonstration we want our land we want not sideline us we want the government to recognize our land actually thi

s marot this big hotel over here it was own the tribe land was owned by Ty family just grab it like that Ty grab this land and award to his sister Rosa and Robert Janet he was on my tribe land the tring and the BR land the big result like that which is encroaching the tribe land is encroaching our land they don't discuss with us very bad if you talk about type my blood start boiling first name of this hotel in 1993 Royal M Resort Royal M Resort was owned by typ Sister typ mmud he was a chief min

ister at the time in the government of sarak they don't respect at all they just bulldo the land they don't care so this is how Ty using his power what call this abuse of power we invited sarak Governor Abdul T Mahmud to attend the rainforest tribunal as a witness his legal representative in Europe did not reply to our invitation we regret that Governor t cannot be here to testify as many of the topics debated today refer to government policies during his 33e Jer as chief minister of Sarawak fro

m 1981 to 2014 I call the next witness a former Timber Company worker from Sarawak he is not able to attend today in person for security reasons they don't care about illegal or not illegal because they got lock they got money this is what we call unauthorized loging the forestry staff accidentally saw there's a unauthorized activity happening the underground so never mind we can arrange that what we mean is there's some discussion between my boss and the staff the forestry staff don't mind to a

sk for some amount of money to cover up the report we call it under table money they want to accept it or not it's up to them for all timber company is a common practice of course company they pay tax to the state government the state government also should consider the community to give back so what do the community got from the timber industry since then until now can say zero a lot of people say all the money is going to r r is M he is the most powerful person who will take all the timber mon

ey and use for himself and the family yeah what can we say he got the power we try to doing some protest also no use because they have the power they can use a force so the community we just stay and doing our routine as what we do since 20 years 30 years all the three with cutting with chop who's the profit of course the T company the state government of course the white hat there were a lot of research by the economics faculty in a lot of universities and talking about the politics of developm

ent that t mmud has been advocating all the time this is what they say s loots and S Timber export from sarawa increased from 5 million in 1951 to 3135 billion in 1990 since Timber industry is export oriented does not generate much benefit to the state although the timber industry provide employment much of the profit generated by the industry go to licensees was Timber concessions become a source of political patronage to the ruling party which then led to the emergence of inst million a who ar

e mostly the family members friends and political supporters of the chief minister so 98% of the lck were actually taken out between 981 to 2014 that is the amount of Timber that is taken out and you look at the law the hold of the forest ordinance the power is vested in the hand of the minister of resource planning as members of the assembly and Parliament we are not supposed to hold office of profit that means we cannot do business now he has got millions and millions buildings here and there

everywhere assets and all this he doesn't have much money when he was younger I mean he was on scholarship to go studies law uh unfortunately so so um yeah I mean now of course we know by being very friendly to the federal ministers all those guys who come in after him he is able to escape any kind of prosecution he can do whatever he want that's how he can amess a lot of all his money at the expense of the people in Sarawak and especially the natives uh communities that are in sarawat everyone

knows there is huge corruption involved in the tropical Timber business Interpol has estimated that more than $30 billion are laed a year we have to tackle this system and we have to follow the money my family and myself are doing well it is nothing to do with exploitation taking anything out of this country we've linked Tai and those close to him to 400 companies in 25 countries I stand here to bring a message from the native people of s about the destruction of our homeland our next witness Mr

s Claire rastle Brown is a journalist and editor of sarak report in London a block dedicated to exposing corruption that drives the deforestation of sarak she has been banned from entering sarak since 2010 CL R ccil thank you for joining us from abroad starting with the role that Tai mammut played um in the destruction of sar's rainforests I mean what was his personal role and what was the role of his family members well with respect to the rainforest it it was part of a whole economic uh system

that Ty put into place the moment he grabbed total control of the country he is controlling all the concessions in the state that are given out and and it's all there we've I've got the documentation now we've looked through it along with BMF um we've scrutinized how endless concessions were handed out again to his family members and favored proxies um whom he promoted um so you see millions of hectares of land been given away in um in concessions for palm oil and logging often just hot potatoe

d by the lucky family member who would um then just sell it on to a proper Logging Company or Plantation company to do the work for a massive uh commission so what role did Jamila type his daughter living in Canada and her Canadian husband sha Murray playing this they are the ones who sued BMF here in Basel yeah yes well they they threatened to sue me too actually um and it's been an involving story um I you know BMF and uh Sout report did a lot of research into um this strange phenomenon whereb

y a young girl pitches up in Canada to together with her brother where they were both studying um and um they start to invest in um massive uh property development um when they're still in their late teens early 20s um the other director of the company that was used a company called sacko was again on mmud um and at their disposal these young Tha college students had Millions which they were pouring into property um the money originated from abroad and the only explanation had to be uh that the

money was coming from her very wealthy father he's on the record now he admitted that he had given a gratuity as he called it to his daughter Jamila in order to start her business um in Canada so the question is when we know that Ty legitimately even through his multiple offices of state was only earning um about $116,000 a year how was he Translating that into the millions that were being invested in these companies um run by his children the evidence is copious you and I have spent years going

through the records and it's a very blatant poining of State assets that Ty has been about um he's a man that has been in public service all his working life on a documented modest income and yet he he displays massive ostentatious wealth um the man is loaded with money it's obvious and everyone talks about it in in sarak um you know that's a starting point but no one has ever done anything about him because he has too much power to unseat the government of the day in Malaysia thank you very mu

ch CLA the tribunal will take into account what you have said today thank you so much thank you for inviting me I would like to ask the witness to explain the slides to us right now um so the slide here is a leaked document leaked back in 2021 in the so-called Pandora papers that lets us better than ever shine a light on the Tide family secrets and hidden wealth this document its relevance is that it provides answers to the questions where did all the money go or where did some of the money go t

hat disappeared uh during TI's Chief Ministry of sahok and the deforestation of sahok I see red flags here as a former prosecutor for money laundering you have hidden ownership you have incorporations in places that don't make you reveal the owner uh of the corporation in the British virsion islands for example you have the investment in uh real estate which is a typical uh type of money laundering investment of course there are lots of clean investors in real estate but that's exactly the point

about moneya laundering you're taking dirty money and you're trying to hide it amongst clean money and you're trying to hide it and put it to use in ways that are actually legitimate business but of course there's a story that needs to be dug up from how that money got there I think one thing that is placing this case in a wider context it's a very long struggle and you need organizations that are willing to keep track of these cases over a long periods of time patiently waiting for breaks like

the Pandora papers and then pursuing governments who may have institutionally forgotten what's going on to do the right thing and that is requiring organizations that are smart and that are tough and able to tough out lawsuits against them uh yet I see that in the future you can help to eliminate corruption or reduce the chance of corruption because you have everything there in black and white it's so transparent so it can see from the community map where the boundary of the different villagers

are so that when the government gives art Timber license when it overlaps with this we can St we see from the map Mrs balang and Mrs Uka wish to submit Maps as evidence for this session thank you these maps are showing the native customary rights land of 63 penan villages in the rainforest of sarak guardi of the r for AC majority thank you for testifying I call the next witness to the stand Mr Roland angan please take to stand the state government of sarawa uh is the one who has the perview or

jurisdiction upon the uh forestry uh land matters and uh we realize that throughout the last 30 or 40 years the problem with our people in SWA is that we have been a promise of good accessibility to all the indigenous communities uh villages where we will will only be able to have good accessibility good access rout to the Village when we accept logging operation and uh the government will never uh fulfill their duty to develop or to uh build any assess Rod to our area first and foremost our pla

ce at the table has been Rob from us a lot of the things that we have been talking about we ask where has the money gone I can tell where the money should have gone it should have gone into building our basic amenities and I still cannot believe in an area where the indigenous Community hail it as their place of origin a place that have around 65,000 in population we are still marginalized when it comes to this very super basic amenities to my government we are your best asset yes and I think if

you could understand so many of the campaign and the journey we have taken to advocate for our people for our rights was not selfish in nature we love to be sarawakian I'm proud to be sarawakian I'm proud to be Malaysian not only am I indigenous I'm also running a civil society organization and most of the time they do not see us as a helpful asset they see us as opposition so probably my message to my government is I don't want to be opposition I want to be a part of a nation building a nation

that I would be very proud to be a part of so not only to my government but also to the world the global North uh this is a time where we return and again I would say we are in a time of Crisis and this discourse that we're having internationally to turn our eyes to the global South the global South are not just followers we are leaders in our own right so to have that recognize yes we would demand for that thank you s Li for testifying here with I close our last session with witness examinatio

n we have very good see the jury will now answer the questions the pen on ask of the tribunal and hand over to the jury the jury finds resource extraction on an unprecedented scale in a relatively short period of time no other region in the world has seen anything comparable to the rainforest destruction seen in sarak the deforestation is not just a threat to plants and to Wildlife it is a threat to the climate and by implication to all human life on Earth the Dan chief minister of Sak did not h

it the ca of the indigenous people to stop robbing the forest and that was why they were forced to put up blockages and also seek International Help to put pressure on the D government to listen to them thanks to Decades of zero accountability and almost no transparency in government sarawak's natural resources and rainforests have been stolen in huge proportions the trees are gone where is the money we heard that the money had been parked in various parts of the world linked to none other and T

ai Mahmud and his family members the local struggles and victimization of indigenous peoples must be considered a grand scale transnational crime it is not just a local struggle the rainforest is lost forever but what is it that we can still put and pull together to recover we must be vigilant we must track and we must find ways to return the stolen assets and return it to the people of which it was stolen from scientists gave us some hope they said that the forest can come back but for this act

ions and change are needed the land rides have to be given back to the indigenous peoples and they have to be offered just compensation for their services in preserving and restoring the Forest they need a seat at the table and the world and leaders must listen to what they ask for compensation indigenous peoples are the best asset for making the future just and environmentally sustainable they are not the past they should lead us into the future thank you one witness has not been here Bruno mon

o however the story we've heard today became also his story his legacy is carried on by the Bruno mono for who has organized this tribunal and will be standing in court tomorrow to defend the truth