A white man's burden

For the people of Kuching, it must have been an amusing spectacle; however, for immigration authorities in the Malaysian state capital of Sarawak, it was a slap in the face. On the morning of March 30, Swiss activist Bruno Manser flew around the residence of Sarawak's most powerful man with the message 'Taib + Penan' plastered over his paraglider. Manser was appealing for dialogue between Chief Minister Taib Mahmud and the Penan, Borneo's last hunter/ gatherers, a group of indigenous people who have watched their forest homes and livelihoods disappear into the hungry maw of bulldozers for more than a decade.

'The officials were lost for words as to how Manser, declared persona non grata by the State Government for his anti-government activities in the 1980s, could have entered undetected,' the New Straits Times reported. 'He made a mockery of the country's sovereignty,' an official was quoted as saying.

From 1984 to 1990 Manser lived in the jungle with groups of nomadic Penan - one of Malaysia's many dispossessed Dayak (non-Malay) tribes. He helped publicise their plight at a time when Malaysia was busy becoming the world's largest producer of tropical hardwood timber, a title it still holds, according to the International Tropical Timber Organisation.

Manser was a wanted man, and not only because he had overstayed his tourist visa. He was deemed to have incited the Penan to protest against the loss of Sarawak's forests and held responsible for the scores of blockades in the late 1980s and the early 90s in which barricades were erected on roads used by timber trucks.

Unrepentant about his latest escapade, he told the South China Morning Post from his Swiss hometown of Basel after being deported: 'This last action was because all the proper channels didn't work. I had approached the Chief Minister many times by fax and by letter. But he never replied.' Manser, now 45, may no longer be the 'Tarzan' he was in the 1980s but he still comes across as a modern-day Robin Hood. Instead of stealing from the rich to give to the poor, however, he attempts to engage the powerful in dialogue and implores them to consider the wishes of the penniless Penan. 'My aim is to draw attention again to the issue,' he says.

Critics may be excused for asking what exactly that issue is after all these years, but Manser seems unfazed, if not indefatigable. 'It is really about their economy,' he says. 'The forest is the capital and they have been living for centuries from the interest of the capital - the non-timber products, which mean the fruit, the wild game, the clear rivers with plenty of fish. But wherever logging has taken place, there is not enough left for the Penan to continue to have their own economy. The Penan have asked the Chief Minister for many years to withdraw logging licences; the issue is resource extraction from within their territory. This has happened and still happens without their consent.' These sorts of statements have only raised the hackles of Sarawak authorities, who consider Manser 'too sensitive' an issue to discuss. Since his stunt three months ago, the Sarawak State Timber Development Corporation has also clamped down on information related to the logging industry, declining to comment on allegations made by Manser's organisation, the Swiss-based Bruno Manser Fonds, and other NGOs.