Do You Believe Your Eyes And Ears Or SEB?
What they found was a barren building site in the middle of nowhere, with none of the promised schools, clinics or churches and precious little in the way of amenities or lands.
Sarawak Report
Sarawak Energy made a great presentation to the United Nations in Geneva last month, boasting about their plans to resettle the Penan, after forcing them from their homeland in Murum to make way for the latest controversial dam project.
It seemed they were going to be moved from a deprived existence (true, especially since Taib took their forest) and placed into a modern settlement with schools, clinics, training, lands, comfortable accommodation and a great compensation package!
As SEB’s statement to the UN put it:
“These arrangements represent a massive and immediate improvement in the standard of living [for the Penan]“
Make no bones about it, according to SEB, the main beneficiaries of this dam are designed to be the down-trodden local Kenyah and Penan people.
Helping these very tribes is the key ambition of CEO Torstein Sjotveit, as he launches his extraordinary dam building spree in Sarawak. Benefitting these ‘backward’ people is what drives and motivates him, according to endless statements he has made.
His own multi-million dollar salary and Taib’s huge business contracts have nothing to do with it.
Except, in the first film report to come out from the area the Penan are now saying that in fact their lives have become immediately far worse in this new place, which they describe as a hellhole and with good reason.
Read more at: http://www.sarawakreport.org/2013/11/do-you-believe-your-eyes-and-ears-or-seb/
