From The International Herald Tribune: Trying to rescue the forests of Sarawak BY GERRY MULLANY HONG KONG — Clare Rewcastle Brown is persona non grata in her native Malaysia, barred from entering the former British colony. But that does not silence Ms . Rewcastle Brown, who is one of the most effective voices calling attention to deforestation in Malaysia. The booming economy there, she contends, has been fueled in part by the country’s willingness to tap its natural resources in ways that have enriched the leadership of her native Sarawak, a vast state on Borneo Island long known for its stunning natural beauty and biodiversity. Through Internet postings and shortwave radio transmissions from London, Ms. Rewcastle Brown has given voice to growing concerns among Malaysians about environmental degradation. She spreads her message on social media, her Sarawak Report Web site and broadcasts on Radio Free Sarawak. ‘‘They can’t do this in Malaysia,’’ she said by phone of her reporting on a country that holds regular democratic elections in which the government nevertheless exerts strong controls on the news media. ‘‘They’d be arrested immediately and their livelihoods would be destroyed.’’ Malaysia is emblematic of Asian nations that are enjoying newfound prosperity but struggling to adhere to democratic ideals in a world where social media are shaping public opinion and testing entrenched leaders. Its prime minister, Najib Razak, was recently re-elected, but the governing coalition failed to secure a majority vote for the first time in 44 years. Through the global reach of social media, Ms. Rewcastle Brown found easy entry into Malaysia’s brewing environmental debates from her perch in London. The daughter of a member of the police force in Sarawak during colonial days, Ms. Rewcastle Brown, 54, recalls flying away from Borneo to attend boarding school as a child. ‘‘I have vivid memories of leaving north Borneo at 8, and I remember the vast canopy of rain forest,’’ she said in a telephone interview. Four decades later — after a journalism career at the BBC World Service, ITV News and Sky Television in London — she returned to Sarawak for an environmental conference in Kuching and was taken aback by the destruction of the forests. ‘‘You had a tiny clique — a family — that is driving this,’’ she said. ‘‘There are a handful of people making the money out of this.’’ She asserts that Abdul Taib Mahmud, the chief minister of Sarawak, has used his control over timber concessions to enrich himself and his relatives and that they park many of their assets overseas. ‘‘For the next year I looked into the subject and was perturbed nobody was covering it,’’ she recalled. With help from the Bruno Manser Fund — named after a Swiss environmental activist who mysteriously disappeared in 2000 in the Borneo rain forest and is presumed dead — she started the Sarawak Report in 2010, tapping into online discussions in Malaysia and, with the help of others, writing investigative news reports in English for a Malaysian audience from Covent Garden in London. (She would not say where their operations are based now, citing safety reasons.) Next came Radio Free Sarawak, helped along by a drive that put 10,000 shortwave radios in the hands of Malaysians to hear the broadcasts, an effort aided by local churches and opposition groups. ‘‘They have verandas where families will sit together and listen to the radio,’’ Ms. Rewcastle Brown said. To increase listenership, they eventually moved the broadcasts to later in the day to accommodate workers coming home from rice paddies. Her effort was anonymous at first — Sarawak Report was started while her brother-in-law, Gordon Brown, was in his last months in office as the British prime minister. She is married to Mr. Brown’s younger brother, Andrew. ‘‘I kept my head down while he was prime minister,’’ she said. But relatives helped convince her to go public to raise the profile of her work. ‘‘It was my family who said it was best to come out into the open.’’ Her news outlets focus heavily on assertions that Mr. Abdul Taib’s family has accumulated billions of dollars of wealth, channeling it to real estate in North America and London, while dominating various industries in Malaysia helped along by his political influence. Mr. Abdul Taib is now facing an inquiry by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission and has lashed back at the panel, calling its members ‘‘naughty and dishonest’’ for looking into his activities and saying allegations that he has Swiss and other overseas bank accounts are ‘‘malicious falsehoods.’’ In early July, she arrived at Kuching International Airport in Sarawak, only to be detained and put back on a plane for Singapore. Bridget Welsh, a political science professor at Singapore Management University who is an expert on Malaysian affairs, credits the two news outlets for their ‘‘impact on the political debate’’ over deforestation in Sarawak. ‘‘Taib’s leadership has been badly affected in the urban areas, especially among the Chinese, as the revelations have reverberated among the more educated and Internet-connected,’’ Ms. Welsh said. Still, she said, deforestation will most likely continue, because ‘‘the elite in Malaysia are concerned with making money.’’ In the meantime, Ms. Rewcastle Brown faces her own challenges, like Web sites created to undercut her work by using similar names, and aggressive Malaysian-financed public relations efforts that seek to portray the Malaysian government’s environmental efforts in a positive light. And she does her work while she and her husband, Andrew Brown, a former journalist now working in the energy industry, raise two teenage boys. Does she regret her shift into opposition journalism from afar? She recalled how she was inspired by the work of Bruno Manser when she started looking into the deforestation of Sarawak. ‘‘I must try to do something,’’ she said of the genesis of her efforts. ‘‘I’ll never forgive myself if I don’t try.’’ ◼ Get the best global news and analysis direct to your device – download the IHT apps for free today! 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Posted on: Sat, 17 Aug 2013 01:33:12 +0000
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