Fw: RAINFOREST ALERT: Stop Malaysian Samling Group - Global Leaders in Rainforest Destruction

[Guest guest]

ACTION ALERT PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY!

 

Stop Malaysian Samling Group - Global Leaders in Rainforest

Destruction

 

By Rainforest Portal, a project of Ecological Internet, Inc.

http://www.RainforestPortal.org/

April 18, 2007

 

TAKE ACTION

Destroyer of ancient rainforests and indigenous livelihoods from

Malaysia to Guyana now a publicly listed company that along with

its financiers is facing renewed international protest

http://www.rainforestportal.org/alerts/send.asp?id=samling

 

Indigenous people living in tropical rainforests in Malaysia and

Guyana are stepping up the global campaign against the Samling

group, one of Malaysia's leading timber companies, and gravest

threat to rainforests and their inhabitants worldwide. The

Samling Group holds 1.6 million hectares of tropical rainforest

concessions in Guyana and 1.4 million hectares in the Malaysian

state of Sarawak. On the recent occasion of its public listing

at the Hong Kong stock exchange, 37 organizations from 18

countries asked investors and banks to shun the company for its

failure to comply with basic environmental and social standards.

In Malaysia, nomadic and semi-nomadic Penan communities living

on the Limbang river in the North of the state of Sarawak have

launched an appeal to the international public urging Credit

Suisse, HSBC and Macquarie Securities, the three banks who have

sponsored Samling´s recent public listing, to stop supporting

the timber giant. Meanwhile, other Penan communities from the

Upper Baram region of Sarawak report renewed police action on

their native lands. Officers of the Sarawak Forestry Corporation

and a special police force unit removed a long-standing Penan

logging road blockade near Long Benali, a community located at a

strategic entry point to one of Sarawak's last contiguous

primary rainforest areas. In the South American state of Guyana,

the Akawini Amerindian Village has asked the Government to help

end an agreement with a Samling-subsidiary. Their council has

said that the villagers were threatened with court action unless

they signed an agreement allowing logging on their lands by

Guyanese Samling subsidiary Barama Co. Ltd. Please send a

protest email targeting the banks funding Samling, asking them

for a public statement to withdraw their support to Samling and

refund of IPO profits.

 

TAKE ACTION:

http://www.rainforestportal.org/alerts/send.asp?id=samling

 

DISCUSS ALERT:

http://www.rainforestportal.org/issues/2007/04/alert_stop_malaysian_samling_

g.asp