PRESS STATEMENT 20 APRIL 2007

STOP THE ENCROACHMENTS! GAZETTE OUR VILLAGES & FOREST RESERVES

We would like to make some clarifications on the five blockades which have been set up by Penan communities in Baram since last week to avoid any misunderstanding on the part of other parties. The villages which are involved in this blockade are Long Sayan and Long Belok in Sungai Apoh, Long Lutin in Sungai Patah, Long Kevok in Sungai Layun, Tutoh and the nomadic group Ba' Bevan in Sungai Si'ang, Tutoh.

Letter To Paula Palmer, Global Response Program Director:

By this letter we want to thank you and recognize the valuable collaboration that you and your organization, Global Response, have given in the international campaign ?No Coal Mining? in the Perija Mountains and in indigenous territories of the Wayuu, Yukpa and Bari peoples of Zulia State in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

Victory!

VENEZUELA- After more than a year of intense pressure, on March 21 President Chavez issued a Presidential Decree that no new coal mines will be built in the Sierra de Perija, and no expansion will be permitted in existing coal mines. "By saying today 'Not one more mine in Zulia state,' president Hugo Chavez brings back hope for the future of the indigenous peoples of the Sierra de Perija and for life itself," said the Wayuu and Yukpa communities in a press release.

For the last two years, Global Response has issued action alerts to support the indigenous Penan in Sarawak, Malaysia, who are determined to stop logging companies from destroying their rainforest home. Most recently we helped form a coalition of 37 international organizations urging investors and banks to refuse financing to Samling, the logging company that is entering Penan traditional territory with the aid of Malaysian police forces.

For updates on the Penan struggle, please see two articles, below.

A Maya man was shot to death last week after a heated discussion with workers from a mine that has opened on his community’s land.

Workers from the Glamis Gold Marlin mine are being held responsible for the March 12 death of Alvaro Sánchez, a Sipakapense villager from Pie de la Cuesta, Guatemala.

Since the controversial mining project began, tension has risen in the area and both community members and outside mine workers have started carrying arms on a regular basis.

We denounce the forced relocation of indigenous families from their traditional lands at the hands of the Venezuelan government and the multi-national coal corporations.

By Paul Malone 

The Canberra Times, Saturday, 10 March 2007

THE BLOCKADE the Penan had erected looked pitiful in the rain, a few bamboo poles strung together across the muddy logging road that cuts through the rainforest near Long Benalih in the upper Baram River region of Malaysian Sarawak, near the Kalimantan border in Borneo. No one was in sight to man the blockade, nor was there any sign of the police who had knocked it down days earlier, or the men from the giant multinational logging company, Samling, on whose behalf they had acted.

Basel (Switzerland), 8 March 2007

37 non-governmental organizations from 18 countries are asking investors and banks to shun the Malaysian logging giant Samling which was publicly listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange earlier this week. The NGO's appeal is appearing in a quarter page advertisement of the Friday 9 March global edition of the International Herald Tribune under the title "Investing in rainforest destruction: Samling Global Ltd. listing with support from Credit Suisse, HSBC, Macquarie".

MOSCOW - Russia plans to start new checks on the Exxon Mobil-led Sakhalin-1 oil and gas project at the end of March, an environmental watchdog official said on Thursday.

Oleg Mitvol, deputy head of the Russian environmental agency RosPrirodNadzor, said the examination of the scheme on the Pacific island of Sakhalin would focus on how Exxon and its partners fulfil their environmental obligations.

Last primary rainforests of Sarawak under immediate danger of destruction

12 February 2007

Samling, the Malaysian logging giant, has started to log the last primary rainforests of the Malaysian state of Sarawak after the police removed a roadblock set up by the local indigenous Penan communities. This was learned from the Borneo Resource Institute BRIMAS, a local NGO based in the city of Miri.

Environmental groups are withholding judgment on the deal struck Thursday between Shell and Russia in which the government-controlled Gazprom apparently acquires a majority stake in the problem-plagued Sakhalin II oil and gas project.[1]

There’s good news to celebrate with our campaign partners in New Caledonia! A French court ordered a temporary halt to construction of the Goro Nickel plant in New Caledonia, on environmental grounds. Since 2003, Global Response has organized several rounds of letter-writing in support of the indigenous Kanak people who oppose the Goro project.