Remove Your Machinery Within Three Days, Baram Natives Warn Dam Builders

25th Octo­ber Native com­mu­ni­ties from Malaysia’s remote Baram dis­trict on the island of Bor­neo have warned state-owned elec­tric­i­ty provider Sarawak Ener­gy today to remove its con­struc­tion machin­ery from their lands with­in three days. The machin­ery had been trans­port­ed to the Baram region in order to pre­pare the con­struc­tion of a 1200 MW dam that would dis­place up to 20’000 natives and flood a rain­for­est area of 400 km².

Accord­ing to Sarawak’s Save Rivers net­work, a group of 30 work­ers had been found to con­duct rock test­ing activ­i­ties at the planned dam site at Long Naah. The work­ers were told to pack up and leave the native lands imme­di­ate­ly. “The work­ers tried to nego­ti­ate but were told in no uncer­tain terms that there was no need for fur­ther nego­ti­a­tions as the com­mu­ni­ties reject­ed the dam project.”

Sarawak Ener­gy was giv­en a three-day ulti­ma­tum to remove its machin­ery from the native lands. A group of vil­lagers set up a camp at the planned dam site to mon­i­tor the imple­men­ta­tion of their demands.

Vil­lagers uphold­ing a sec­ond road block­ade site near Long Lama today informed that their block­ade was suc­cess­ful and no new con­struc­tion equip­ment had been trans­port­ed into the inte­ri­or.

Fur­ther infor­ma­tion on the dam protest would be released by Radio Free Sarawak (www.radiofreesarawak.org) on SW 15420 KHZ between 7 pm and 8.30 pm local time.

The Bruno Manser Fund calls on the Malaysian gov­ern­ment and on Sarawak Ener­gy to halt all works on the planned Baram dam and to cre­ate full trans­paren­cy on the costs and con­tracts relat­ed to the con­struc­tion of the Murum dam.