First Our Trees, Now Our Oil – but still no Doctors!

Thursday, January 20th, 2011 GMT

Najib and Taib helicopter into Belaga

Sarawak’s vast natural resources have been sucked dry, but still we learn that there is not enough money to hire a doctor for the new clinic in Belaga opened by the Prime Minister of Malaysia himself last week!  The ten thousand displaced Bakun Dam refugees in Belaga must wonder why, since a tropical jungle the size of Singapore was cut down around them and sold to make way for the hydro-project which nobody needs.
Where did that money go and what about the compensation and the better life these people were promised in return for being forced from their native lands?   How can it be that the Malaysian Prime Minister and Sarawak’s Chief Minister, who flew in by helicopters surrounded by costly entourages to seek the votes of these disillusioned people, could not even afford to give them a doctor? 
No money for doctors but plenty for Taib’s Wedding Feasts

Vote winner - The Wedding Tour is being planned for every area of Sarawak

We hope we can shame them into looking again.  Perhaps they could save something from Taib’s upcoming Wedding Tour of Sarawak to boast his extremely young new bride?  Since the budget for this string of parties due to take place all over Sarawak will have to be vast, a small saving could pay for ten doctors in Belaga for ten years and for doctors in every other district as well!
Does Taib really think this bragging about his his own healthy ability to take a new bride is going to win votes from people who are worrying about the health of their own young children, their sick parents and their women in childbirth?  Is Sarawak Report alone in finding this wedding feast charade conducted by such an old man to be both disgusting and insensitive?
We advise those voters to be aware of another series of Road Shows also taking place at this time.  This is the Road Show of the Human Rights lawyer Baru Bian, who has won so many land rights cases for his native peoples and who is now supporting the cases of 200 different communities across Sarawak, who are fighting the land grabs conducted by Taib and his BN party.
Baru Bian is also the new leader of the opposition PKR party and he and his allies in DAP and SNAP want to return the people their lands and to pay for those missing doctors and schools and roads and generators.  Baru does not care to be rich, so find time to attend his Road Shows and forget about the scraps thrown to you from the Taib Wedding Feasts!
They took the wood and offer you Wedding Feast scraps!

The former forests of Belaga, cleared by BN cronies

The irreplaceable wood of Bakun and the rest of Sarawak went to build houses in Japan and China, furniture in Europe and even to make paper.  It raised billions and billions and billions of ringgit.
But what has been given to the people of Sarawak?  Meanwhile, the life of their jungle has been extinguished.  A priceless environmental heritage and a DNA data-base that could have resourced a thousand scientific discoveries has been lost to Taib’s crude grab at a single natural resource. 

So why do some people call Taib clever?  He was not clever enough to realise that the single commodity he grabbed as he tore down the glorious jungles of Borneo represented just one tiny fraction of the wealth available to a more discerning exploiter of nature.  A thousand benefits could have come to the people of Sarawak if their jungle had been more intelligently managed.  The people who call Taib clever mean that he may have destroyed his country, but that he made himself rich, possibly the richest man in the world.
They think this is clever.  However, it is stupid not to realise that the anger of the people of Sarawak would eventually rise up at such treatment and threaten to sweep that wealth away!  Taib now hopes his young, bejewelled Arab bride will melt their hearts again!
So what is this about our oil?

Alternative vision for Sarawak - while Taib celebrated yet another wedding feast at the weekend PKR Leader, the Land Rights lawyer Baru Bian, went on the first of his Road Shows to meet the people and hear about their real concerns

With the trees of Sarawak now gone Sarawak Report has now been able to reveal that there has been a dangerous new direction to Taib’s quest for wealth.   It is clear he does not want to give up his power until he has managed to suck us dry of oil as well.  For years our vast oil reserves have been sucked dry by Malaysia under his agreement.
Our off-shore reserves which could have made Sarawak into a beautifully kept country with nice roads and hospitals and school have all been pumped into Malaysia and the bank accounts of the BN politicians who have run the country since independence – look at the agreement 95 % of our oil wealth to Malaysia 5% of our oil wealth supposedly to Sarawak.
In our last report we showed that what remains of Sarawak’s oil, our reserves in our shallow waters, is under the control of Taib and new evidence that has come our way indicates that the old despot has once again handed its extraction to his same old business cronies.  Is there any evidence that a single ringgit of this wealth will come back to pay for doctors in Sarawak?