Malaysia: Accor hotel construction linked to genocide of Penan people
The Switzerland-based Bruno Manser Fund reports that NOVOTEL, a
subsidiary of ACCOR, is jointly building a 4.5-star hotel in Kuching,
Sarawak’s capital city, with Interhill, a Malaysian tropical timber
company.
“Interhill has been logging Sarawak’s tropical rainforest since the end of the 1980s and bears decisive responsibility for the ongoing destruction of the very basis of the Penan’s existence”, said Lukas Straumann, Director of the Bruno Manser Fund.
Get full text; support writer, producer of the words:
http://news.mongabay.com/2009/0223-accor_sarawak.html
In a letter issued today to ACCOR CEO, Gilles Pélisson, Bruno Manser
Fund demands that ACCOR withdraw from the 388-room NOVOTEL INTERHILL
hotel project. “We are shocked by ACCOR’s cooperation with Interhill,
since it is completely at odds with ACCOR’s ecological and social
standards,” said Straumann.
Get full text; support writer, producer of the words:
http://news.mongabay.com/2009/0223-accor_sarawak.html
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Penan village alerts international community: We need urgent assistance to protect our last remaining forest reserve
Surveyors of Interhill Logging are approaching Long Item, a Penan village in the Middle Baram region of Sarawak, in order to prepare the community’s last forest reserve for logging, the Bruno Manser Fonds learned today. The Penan villagers are asking the international community for urgent support.
“Our biggest wish is that Interhill will stop entering our community forest”, headman Balan John of Long Item said. “We need urgent assistance from outside to stop the loggers from destroying our livelihood.” According to the villagers, Interhill already destroyed fruit trees, poison dart trees and had dumped toxic waste in the village’s drinking water supply. In July 2008, the community denounced the destruction of a gravesite by Interhill workers.
Interhill has been logging a timber concession of 55?000 hectares of tropical rainforest in Sarawak’s Middle Baram region since the 1980s. Currently, the Malaysian timber company is reinvesting its profits in a 388-room hotel project, the Novotel Interhill Kuching, which will be managed by the French ACCOR Group.
The Bruno Manser Fund is demanding the withdrawal of ACCOR from its controversial cooperation with Interhill.
Please contact us for further information:
Bruno Manser Fund
Socinstrasse 37, CH – 4051 Basel
info@bmf.ch, http://www.bmf.ch
http://www.stop-interhill.com
Support the Penan and sign the online petition: http://www.stop-interhill.com