Category: Capitalism / Globalisation

Blockade at Fracking Waste Storage Facility

This morn­ing 19th Feb, pro­test­ers block­ad­ed a Frack­ing Waste Stor­age Facil­i­ty in New Mata­moras, OH. Truck traf­fic to the facil­i­ty was dis­rupt­ed for 2.5 hours. As of this post­ing, a mono­pod is still in place on the site.

This morn­ing 19th Feb, pro­test­ers block­ad­ed a Frack­ing Waste Stor­age Facil­i­ty in New Mata­moras, OH. Truck traf­fic to the facil­i­ty was dis­rupt­ed for 2.5 hours. As of this post­ing, a mono­pod is still in place on the site.

In an unprece­dent­ed show of uni­ty against the extrac­tion indus­try mem­bers of  Appalachia Resist!, Tar Sands Block­ade, Rad­i­cal Action for Moun­tain Peo­ples’ Sur­vival (RAMPS), a coali­tion of indige­nous lead­ers includ­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives from No Line 9 and the Unis’tot’en Camp, Great Plains Tar Sands Resis­tance, and Earth First! chap­ters from across the coun­try have gath­ered in South­ern Ohio to par­tic­i­pate in and sup­port this action.  This is the lat­est in an ongo­ing and esca­lat­ing cam­paign of resis­tance to the dan­ger­ous and exploita­tive resource extrac­tion indus­try that is threat­en­ing the exis­tence and sur­vival of the earth and all of it’s inhab­i­tants world-wide.

 

 

“Cancel Keystone Pipeline:” Largest Climate Protest in U.S. History

Between 35,000 and 50,000 peo­ple ral­lied in Wash­ing­ton, DC on Sun­day, Feb 17th in the largest glob­al warm­ing protest in U.S. his­to­ry. The pri­ma­ry demand: ditch the Key­stone XL tar sands pipeline.

Between 35,000 and 50,000 peo­ple ral­lied in Wash­ing­ton, DC on Sun­day, Feb 17th in the largest glob­al warm­ing protest in U.S. his­to­ry. The pri­ma­ry demand: ditch the Key­stone XL tar sands pipeline.

Read some tes­ti­mo­ni­als here from women who trav­eled to DC to protest the pipeline.

Mean­while, in spite of vague promis­es to take action to avert cat­a­stroph­ic glob­al warm­ing, Obama’s admin­is­tra­tion is gear­ing up for a big frack­ing push to accel­er­ate nat­ur­al gas min­ing.

Just another manic monday.

Glen­gad com­pound invad­ed and work stopped for over 3 hours. Traf­fic con­trol out of con­trol.

Glen­gad com­pound invad­ed and work stopped for over 3 hours. Traf­fic con­trol out of con­trol.

On a sun­ny dawn after a suc­cess­ful nation­al cam­paign meet­ing at the week­end, cam­paign­ers decid­ed to take to the bog and stop work on the Glen­gad com­pound where Shell are cur­rent­ly exca­vat­ing the recep­tion pit for the tun­nel bor­ing machine.

All the pro­test­ers man­aged to breach the rag­tag fences and two decid­ed to rest them­selves upon a Shell dig­ger.
Work was stopped for over 3 hours on the com­pound.

Protest con­tin­ued with a road block­ade but when dig­gers recom­menced there work, pro­test­ers ran back to the com­pound and tried once more to breach the fences and stop work.

After a short scuf­fle with Shell secu­ri­ty IRMS pro­test­ers moved back to block­ade trucks for the rest of the day.
 

Relat­ed Link: http://www.shelltosea.com
 

Protesters continue to frustrate Shell’s work 17th Feb

This last week has been anoth­er week of resis­tance to Shell con­tro­ver­sial pipeline, with numer­ous truck block­ades and dis­rup­tion to work­ers

This last week has been anoth­er week of resis­tance to Shell con­tro­ver­sial pipeline, with numer­ous truck block­ades and dis­rup­tion to work­ers

In sol­i­dar­i­ty with our friend Izzy Ní Ghraidm, we have con­tin­ued to keep up the pres­sure on Shell by block­ing trucks and work­ers through­out the day.
Shell work­ers arrive at 6.30am and there are up to 105 truck move­ments per day so there’s plen­ty of chance to show your oppo­si­tion and sup­port the local com­mu­ni­ty.

Shell was forced to admit that they had been expe­ri­enc­ing prob­lems with the Tun­nel Bor­ing Machine after it was announced on the radio that work on the tun­nel had resumed.
How­ev­er just days after this was announced there are rumours fly­ing of fur­ther prob­lems.

As the pho­to of Glen­gad shows, the Shell com­pound has expand­ed and is now just next to the old camp field. It is a real eye­sore on this beau­ti­ful land­scape but it is not too late to stop it.
Come up and sup­port this com­mu­ni­ty under siege from Shell.
 

Relat­ed Link: http://www.shelltosea.com
 

actions against E‑On in Nottingham

15.02.2013

Last night the doors to the Not­ting­ham E‑on Open House on Lis­ter Gate were d‑locked shut in sol­i­dar­i­ty with any­one strug­gling to stay warm this win­ter.

15.02.2013

Last night the doors to the Not­ting­ham E‑on Open House on Lis­ter Gate were d‑locked shut in sol­i­dar­i­ty with any­one strug­gling to stay warm this win­ter.

Eon and their part­ners in crime are not only destroy­ing the plan­et as they extract every last inch of nat­ur­al resources from the ground, they’re also doing their best to fleece each and every­one of us as they raise the prices year in year out. What we did last night was a minor act. Car­ried out by indi­vid­u­als who are dis­gust­ed with the ways in which the cor­po­rate pow­er and greed which goes hand in hand with this sys­tem. It is destroy­ing the plan­et, human beings and every liv­ing thing. We must fight back.
 
Update: I work across the road from the open house. It had to open two hours lat­er than usu­al.
 
——-
 
Stop G8 Notts hit the streets of Not­ting­ham yes­ter­day dis­trib­ut­ing a leaflet that made con­nect­ing the every­day real­i­ty of pover­ty in the city, where peo­ple are forced to choose between eat­ing or stay­ing warm to the cap­i­tal­ist spec­ta­cle of the G8 sum­mit tak­ing place lat­er this year.
Indi­vid­u­als were recep­tive to the mes­sage although many peo­ple did­n’t view them­selves as empow­ered to do any­thing about the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion. This re-enforced the impor­tance of us being on the streets talk­ing and engag­ing with as many peo­ple as we can, talk­ing about the prob­lems, their caus­es and how we can tack­le them on micro and macro lev­els.

Starv­ing to Sttay Warm

Fuel pover­ty protest against E.on.

Eon and the oth­er five big ener­gy com­pa­nies (EDF, Cen­tri­ca, SSE, Scot­tish Pow­er and npow­er) are a car­tel which con­trols 99% of the domes­tic ener­gy mar­ket. Domes­tic ener­gy prices for us are con­stant­ly ris­ing whilst every year these com­pa­nies declare record prof­its.

Accord­ing to a recent sur­vey, this win­ter 1 in 4 fam­i­lies have had to face a stark choice between heat­ing and eat­ing. Whilst e.on exec­u­tives and share­hold­ers spend bumper prof­its on sec­ond homes and hol­i­days
abroad, peo­ple in the UK are freez­ing because they need to eat.

We are starv­ing to stay warm!

On June the 17th and 18th the G8 world lead­ers will be meet­ing in Fer­managh, North­ern Ire­land, to dis­cuss how to main­tain the cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem which enables and jus­ti­fies this day­light rob­bery. While we allow our lives to be gov­erned by these crooks prof­it will always come before peo­ple. The only way to achieve real change is to break from this vicious cycle of exploita­tion, smash cap­i­tal­ism and reor­gan­ise our com­mu­ni­ties in a way which ensures every­one has access to the neces­si­ties of life.

From the 10th of June there will be a week of action, work­shops and meet­ings in Lon­don to protest against the G8 and to work towards build­ing the sort of world that we want to live in

stopg8notts@riseup.net

 

48 arrested in historic act of civil disobedience to stop Keystone XL pipeline

JULIAN BOND, BILL MCKIBBEN, MICHAEL BRUNE, AND OTHERS ARRESTED IN FRONT OF WHITE HOUSE IN CALL FOR ACTION ON CLIMATE

JULIAN BOND, BILL MCKIBBEN, MICHAEL BRUNE, AND OTHERS ARRESTED IN FRONT OF WHITE HOUSE IN CALL FOR ACTION ON CLIMATE

WASHINGTON, D.C. — This morn­ing, 48 envi­ron­men­tal, civ­il rights, and com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers from across the coun­try joined togeth­er for a his­toric dis­play of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence at the White House where they demand­ed that Pres­i­dent Oba­ma deny the Key­stone XL tar sands pipeline and address the cli­mate cri­sis.

Among the notable lead­ers involved in the civ­il dis­obe­di­ence were Michael Brune, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Sier­ra Club; Bill McK­ibben, Founder of 350.org; Julian Bond, for­mer pres­i­dent of the NAACP; Dan­ny Kennedy, CEO of Sungevi­ty; Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Con­nor Kennedy, and Daryl Han­nah, Amer­i­can actress.

After block­ing a main thor­ough­fare in front of the White House, and refus­ing to move when asked by police, the activists were arrest­ed and trans­port­ed to Ana­cos­tia for pro­cess­ing by the US Park Police Depart­ment.

“The threat to our planet’s cli­mate is both grave and urgent,” said civ­il rights activist Julian Bond. “Although Pres­i­dent Oba­ma has declared his own deter­mi­na­tion to act, much that is with­in his pow­er to accom­plish remains undone, and the deci­sion to allow the con­struc­tion of a pipeline to car­ry mil­lions of bar­rels of the most-pol­lut­ing oil on Earth from Canada’s tar sands to the Gulf Coast of the U.S. is in his hands. I am proud today to stand before my fel­low cit­i­zens and declare, ‘I am will­ing to go to jail to stop this wrong.’ The envi­ron­men­tal cri­sis we face today demands noth­ing less.”

 

“We real­ly shouldn’t have to be put in hand­cuffs to stop KXL–our nation’s lead­ing cli­mate sci­en­tists have told us it’s dan­ger­ous fol­ly, and all the recent Nobel Peace lau­re­ates have urged us to set a dif­fer­ent kind of exam­ple for the world, so the choice should be obvi­ous,” said 350.org founder Bill McK­ibben. “But giv­en the amount of mon­ey on the oth­er side, we’ve had to spend our bod­ies, and we’ll prob­a­bly have to spend them again.”

“For the first time in the Sier­ra Club’s 120-year his­to­ry, we have joined the ranks of vision­ar­ies of the past and present to engage in civ­il dis­obe­di­ence, know­ing that the issue at hand is so crit­i­cal, it com­pels the strongest defen­si­ble action,” said Michael Brune, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Sier­ra Club. “We can­not afford to allow the pro­duc­tion, trans­port, export and burn­ing of the dirt­i­est oil on Earth via the Key­stone XL pipeline. Pres­i­dent Oba­ma must deny the pipeline and take deci­sive steps to address cli­mate dis­rup­tion, the most sig­nif­i­cant issue of our time.”

If approved, the Key­stone XL pipeline would boost car­bon pol­lu­tion tomor­row by trig­ger­ing a boom of growth in the tar sands indus­try in Cana­da, and great­ly increas­ing green­house gas emis­sions.

The Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency (EPA) has esti­mat­ed that this tar sands pipeline will boost annu­al U.S. car­bon pol­lu­tion emis­sions by up to 27.6 mil­lion met­ric tons – the impact of adding near­ly 6 mil­lion cars on the road.

How­ev­er, new research by Oil Change Inter­na­tion­al (OCI) shows that the government’s esti­mates of the car­bon emis­sions asso­ci­at­ed with Key­stone XL under­es­ti­mates the full impact of tar sands because a bar­rel of tar sands pro­duces sig­nif­i­cant­ly more petro­le­um coke than con­ven­tion­al crude, which is more car­bon-inten­sive than coal. The research can be found at: http://priceofoil.org/2013/01/17/petroleum-coke-the-coal-hiding-in-the‑t….

OCI’s research shows that Key­stone XL will pro­duce enough pet­coke to fuel five U.S. coal plants. The emis­sions from this pet­coke have not yet been includ­ed in cli­mate-impact analy­sis of the pipeline or the tar sands indus­try and OCI shows that it will raise total emis­sions by at least 13 per­cent.

Shell to Sea campaigner jailed for 3 months. 14th Feb

Ms Ní Ghraidm plead­ed guilty to a Sec­tion 8 and 9 charge and refused to do com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice as she felt her protest was a ser­vice to a com­mu­ni­ty under siege from Shell. The Judge then sen­tenced Ms Ní Ghraidm to 3 months in jail.

Ms Ní Ghraidm plead­ed guilty to a Sec­tion 8 and 9 charge and refused to do com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice as she felt her protest was a ser­vice to a com­mu­ni­ty under siege from Shell. The Judge then sen­tenced Ms Ní Ghraidm to 3 months in jail.

Izzy has been a strong sup­port­er of Shell to Sea for years and her com­mit­ment to the cause is much appre­ci­at­ed by us here in Mayo.
She has coura­geous­ly stood up for our strug­gle to pro­tect our com­mu­ni­ty and is pas­sion­ate in her fight to reclaim Irish nat­ur­al resources.

Speak­ing from the Court, Shell to Sea spokesper­son Ter­ence Con­way stat­ed “Yes­ter­day in Bel­mul­let Dis­trict court, we saw a com­mit­ted envi­ron­men­tal cam­paign­er being jailed for a minor pub­lic order inci­dent. On the oth­er hand a Shell secu­ri­ty guard who was caught deal­ing drugs is allowed to walk free. Ms Ní Ghraidm has tak­en a brave stand to sup­port this com­mu­ni­ty’s strug­gle against a greedy multi­na­tion­al that will do what­ev­er it is allowed to by the sub­servient State insti­tu­tions”.

Mr Con­way con­tin­ued “What we’re expe­ri­enc­ing is the selec­tive appli­ca­tion of the law. Yes­ter­day Prov­i­dence Resources dropped their Dublin Bay oil drilling licence because the State has not got it’s required EU envi­ron­men­tal laws in place. The same EU envi­ron­men­tal laws apply to Cor­rib but are being ignored.”

Fracking Saboteur Sentenced to 6 Months. 13 Feb

As far as we can tell, there’s been no clear rea­son expressed about why he did it.

As far as we can tell, there’s been no clear rea­son expressed about why he did it. But does there real­ly need to be? Any­one who risks their free­dom to attack a frack­ing site in the Mar­cel­lus Shale, and in one evening suc­ceeds at delay­ing oper­a­tions for three months, is a hero to all who drink water and hate ener­gy cor­po­ra­tions.

Tan­ner Long, 21, from the Trout Run area of Lycoming Coun­ty, PA, alleged­ly admit­ted to an ambi­tious act of van­dal­ism on August 30, 2012, and was sen­tenced in late-Jan­u­ary to six months of prison (in a “coun­ty pre-release cen­ter”) and five years pro­ba­tion.

The sto­ry was not heav­i­ly report­ed out­side the local area, but you can check out a short news clip here, which includes heart warm­ing images of over­turned bull­doz­ers at a trashed frack­ing site on pub­lic land. You can also send him a let­ter here for the time being:

Tan­ner J. Long #3625
Lycoming Coun­ty Prison
277 West Third Street
Williamsport, PA 17701

What we know of the sto­ry: In Sep­tem­ber 2012, a $10,000 reward was offered by Brubach­er Ener­gy Ser­vices for any infor­ma­tion lead­ing to the arrest and con­vic­tion of who­ev­er van­dal­ized con­struc­tion equip­ment in Loy­al­sock State For­est. 

Accord­ing to Myron Brubach­er, an own­er of the Lan­cast­er Coun­ty company.”They basi­cal­ly cut the trees to block access to the road where our equip­ment was locat­ed.”

The van­dals, who had some­how acquired keys, used pieces of equip­ment to dam­age oth­er pieces of equip­ment. In total, the com­pa­ny report­ed $120,000 in dam­ages.

“They rolled sev­er­al pieces, one of our machines was rolled over on its side. They did a lot of dam­age,” Brubach­er said. “It took three months to repair the dam­age.”

He added that the com­pa­ny has increased secu­ri­ty since the van­dal­ism.

Lycoming Coun­ty Judge Nan­cy L. Butts  told Long to “grow up.” While we at the EF! Newswire could see  the poten­tial for fla­grant Bart Simp­son-inspired imma­tu­ri­ty when fac­ing off with some­one named Judge Butts, her hon­or was appar­ent­ly refer­ring to Long’s hero­ic van­dal­ism being imma­ture (as opposed any per­son­al insult  to Butts that one may have eas­i­ly been tempt­ed to utter, as we were.)

While three oth­ers report­ed­ly watched on the night of Aug. 30, Long start­ed heavy equip­ment belong­ing to Brubach­er Ener­gy, of Bow­mans­ville, at a well site off Route 14 north of Trout Run.

Lifelong Oklahoman Youth Pastor Locked to Machinery in Protest of Keystone XL 11 Feb

Ear­li­er this morn­ing, Ste­fan Warn­er, a youth pas­tor who was born and raised in Har­rah, OK, locked him­self to machin­ery being used to build the tox­ic Key­stone XL tar sands pipeline through Creek land near Schoolton, OK.

Warn­er is tak­ing action to pro­tect the health of the North Cana­di­an Riv­er, com­mu­ni­ties and land that this pipeline would run through from being irre­versibly dam­aged by dilut­ed bitu­men (tar sands) leaks and spills. He is send­ing a clear mes­sage that the cur­rent day colo­nial­ism and dis­re­gard for the health and sov­er­eign­ty of indige­nous peo­ples in Alber­ta, Cana­da, and along the pipeline is unacceptable—from a Chris­t­ian per­spec­tive, as well as a human per­spec­tive.

Tar sands pipelines have a hor­ren­dous track record: the exist­ing Key­stone 1 pipeline leaked 12 times in its first year, and at least thir­ty times to date. In 2010, the added dan­gers of tar sands pipelines were demon­strat­ed by Enbridge’s Line 6B pipeline spill of more than a mil­lion gal­lons of dilut­ed bitu­men into the Kala­ma­zoo Riv­er in Michi­gan. The Kala­ma­zoo tar sands spill is the costli­est inland spill in U.S. his­to­ry, drain­ing the oil spill cof­fers and plac­ing the $800 mil­lion and ris­ing price tag onto the backs of local and fed­er­al tax­pay­ers. But it is not the mon­e­tary bur­den that weighs heav­i­est. It is the toll on human life and the health of local ecosys­tems that is immea­sur­able, espe­cial­ly the tox­i­c­i­ty of the dilut­ed bitu­men and undis­closed pro­pri­etary chem­i­cals has proven dev­as­tat­ing.

In addi­tion to the immense dan­gers posed by the Key­stone XL, Tran­sCana­da has been mis­rep­re­sent­ing the eco­nom­ic effects of the pipeline. The major­i­ty of con­struc­tion jobs are tem­po­rary and have been filled by Wis­con­sin-based con­trac­tor Michel’s, not Okla­homans and Tex­ans. Despite Tran­sCana­da and the State Department’s rhetoric of ener­gy inde­pen­dence, the dilut­ed bitu­men trans­port­ed by the Key­stone XL is des­tined for export to for­eign mar­kets after being refined in Gulf Coast refiner­ies, and the Nation­al Resources Defense Coun­cil asserts that the KXL will increase domes­tic gas prices.

“I grew up in a town where the North Cana­di­an Riv­er runs right through, and we can’t let the North Cana­di­an become anoth­er Kala­ma­zoo,” said Okla­homan youth pas­tor Ste­fan Warn­er. “I fig­ure folks have to take action to stop our beau­ti­ful Okla­homa from being marred by a for­eign cor­po­ra­tion, and stand up to fight big cor­po­ra­tions who think that poi­son­ing peo­ple and steal­ing land is accept­able so long as they make a prof­it.”

Warn­er is act­ing with Great Plains Tar Sands Resis­tance, a coali­tion of Okla­homans and allies fight­ing to pre­vent con­struc­tion of the Key­stone XL which will bring dan­ger­ous and tox­ic dilut­ed bitu­men from the bio­me-con­sum­ing tar sands gigapro­ject to refin­ery com­mu­ni­ties in the Gulf. This action comes in the wake of dozens of sim­i­lar actions which have active­ly fought con­struc­tion of the Key­stone XL in Okla­homa and Texas. In light of reports of shod­dy weld­ing by Tran­sCana­da whistle­blow­er Evan Vokes and the recent release of pho­tographs depict­ing holes in the weld of a pipe buried in Texas, the strug­gle to keep the Key­stone XL from being com­plet­ed is even more urgent.

Updates

At 8 a.m., direct sup­port for Ste­fan was arrest­ed with­out warn­ing and placed in police car. Six oth­er peo­ple on site are being detained.

At 9 a.m., six peo­ple detained now arrest­ed. Sev­en police vehi­cles are on scene. Work­ers have low­ered side-boom in dis­re­gard of Stefan’s safe­ty and OSHA reg­u­la­tions. Ste­fan is still locked to machin­ery but lying painful­ly face-down on the low­ered arm. Police are obscur­ing Ste­fan from view and not allow­ing any­one with­in pho­tograph­ing dis­tance.

At 9:15 a.m., anoth­er indi­vid­ual arrest­ed. This per­son was not ini­tial­ly detained but was pre­vent­ed from access­ing her vehi­cle since 8 a.m. Ste­fan
is still hold­ing strong. It also appears that this action is also blockad­ing an active frack site.

Indigenous resistance forces Malaysia to scale back twelve dam megaproject

A Malaysian state min­is­ter Fri­day said the gov­ern­ment would not push ahead with build­ing a dozen new dams on Bor­neo island, acknowl­edg­ing they have caused out­rage from local tribes and envi­ron­men­tal­ists.

A Malaysian state min­is­ter Fri­day said the gov­ern­ment would not push ahead with build­ing a dozen new dams on Bor­neo island, acknowl­edg­ing they have caused out­rage from local tribes and envi­ron­men­tal­ists.

The pro­pos­als sparked fears that the dams would destroy pris­tine rain­forests, endan­ger wildlife, and dis­place natives in Sarawak, a Malaysian state crossed by pow­er­ful rivers with rich jun­gle habi­tats.

“It is not a firm plan to build 12 dams. I don’t think we will need that. We will only need four,” James Mas­ing, Sarawak’s state min­is­ter of land devel­op­ment, told AFP in an inter­view.

Mas­ing said the gov­ern­ment was back­ing off in response to wide­spread crit­i­cism. Protests over the years have seen activists and locals stag­ing block­ades of roads into dam areas.

“I’m pleased that this type of thing (protests) takes place. Not all that we do is cor­rect, and this shows we need to refine our plans and think again,” he said.

The now-com­plete Bakun mega-dam, which is not part of the new dam pro­pos­al, has already been dogged for years by claims of cor­rup­tion in con­struc­tion con­tracts, the flood­ing of a huge swathe of rain­for­est and the dis­place­ment of thou­sands of tribes­peo­ple.

Despite that, the gov­ern­ment moot­ed con­struct­ing more dams as part of an indus­tri­al devel­op­ment dri­ve to boost the resource-rich state’s back­ward econ­o­my.

Anoth­er dam at Murum, also deep in the inte­ri­or, is near­ing com­ple­tion and two oth­ers are in the plan­ning stages as part of the new pro­pos­al.

Togeth­er the four dams — at Bakun, Murum, Baleh and Baram — are already expect­ed to put out near­ly 6,000 megawatts of pow­er, six times what Sarawak cur­rent­ly uses, Mas­ing said.

“The protests are becom­ing more vocal on the ground so (the dam rethink) is a very good devel­op­ment for me,” said Peter Kallang, mem­ber of a Sarawak tribe and chair­man of SAVE Rivers, an NGO that has cam­paigned against the dams.

How­ev­er, he said plans for the Baram and Baleh dams should be scrapped as well, not­ing that the Baram dam would dis­place about 20,000 peo­ple, com­pared to about 10,000 at Bakun, and destroy irre­place­able for­est.

He said SAVE Rivers last month organ­ised a float­ing protest along the Baram riv­er that cruised down riv­er for three days and was met with sup­port along the way by local tribes­peo­ple.

Kallang and oth­er activists have also trav­elled abroad to lob­by against the dams, includ­ing meet­ing offi­cials of Hydro Tas­ma­nia, an Aus­tralian cor­po­ra­tion that advis­es the Sarawak gov­ern­ment on the dams.

The Tas­ma­nia gov­ern­ment cor­po­ra­tion pledged in Decem­ber after meet­ing the activists that it would pull its per­son­nel out of Sarawak by the end of 2013, Kallang said.

Sarawak’s tribes — eth­ni­cal­ly dis­tinct from Malaysia’s major­i­ty Malays — fear that they will lose their ances­tral lands and hunt­ing and bur­ial grounds, as the gov­ern­ment encour­ages them to make way for projects and move into new set­tle­ments.

Those are equipped with med­ical clin­ics, elec­tric­i­ty, and Inter­net access. But vil­lage elders and activists say alco­holism, drug use, and crime are on the increase and anger is ris­ing over con­tin­u­ing encroach­ment on native lands.

In one of the block­ades in 2011, Penan tribes­peo­ple blocked roads into their lands for a week to protest log­ging and alleged riv­er pol­lu­tion by Malaysian firm Inter­hill until the block­ade was dis­man­tled by author­i­ties.