Pakatan told Sarawak Report to stop attacking Taib
According to the anti-Taib movement, the Malaysian Government or the Sarawak State Government had ordered the murder of Bruno Manser and this was why Sarawak Report was set up. Sarawak Report’s mission is to bring Taib down and make sure he spends the rest of his days in jail.
THE CORRIDORS OF POWER
Raja Petra Kamarudin
Since 2015, Sarawak Report has been taking orders from Pakatan Harapan and no longer from the Bruno Manser Fund
Pakatan Harapan has asked Sarawak Report to stop attacking Sarawak Governor Tun Pehin Abdul Taib Mahmud and focus just on 1MDB. That is why Sarawak Report has gone silent on the Taib stories.
Sarawak Report was set up and was funded by the Swiss-based Bruno Manser Fund (Bruno Manser Fonds) specifically to bring down Taib when he was Sarawak’s Chief Minister.
Bruno Manser mysteriously disappeared in 2000 after the Malaysian government declared him “number one enemy of the state” and sent special units to search for him in the Sarawak jungles. It is believed he was murdered and his body buried deep in the jungles in an unmarked grave.
Sarawak Report was set up to bring down Taib after Bruno Manser mysteriously disappeared and is believed to have been murdered by the government
According to the anti-Taib movement, the Malaysian Government or the Sarawak State Government had ordered the murder of Bruno Manser and this was why Sarawak Report was set up. Sarawak Report’s mission is to bring Taib down and make sure he spends the rest of his days in jail.
Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, the then Prime Minister, however, defended Taib. Mahathir blamed Manser for disrupting law and order and wrote a letter to Bruno Manser telling him that “it was about time that you stop your arrogance and your intolerable European superiority. You are no better than the Penan.”
In March 1992, Mahathir wrote another letter to Manser saying, “As a Swiss living in the laps of luxury with the world’s highest standard of living, it is the height of arrogance for you to advocate that the Penans live on maggots and monkeys in their miserable huts, subjected to all kinds of diseases.”
Taib decides whether Sarawak works with Pakatan Harapan or with Barisan Nasional so he must be protected at all cost
Mahathir, just like Taib, hated Bruno Manser and when the Swiss disappeared the Malaysian government did nothing to search for him or to solve the mystery of his disappearance. And this increased the suspicion that the Malaysian government or the Sarawak State Government might be behind Bruno Manser’s disappearance.
The former Sabah Chief Minister, Musa Aman, has been arrested and charged for corruption. Taib, however, has been spared the same fate. And the silence from Sarawak Report is deafening, which seems to confirm the talk that Pakatan Harapan has asked Sarawak Report to stand down and not attack Taib.
“For us to take action, there must be a report by someone. Up to this moment there was a lot of talk but no proper report, so we have not taken any action just yet. But if people of Sarawak people wish us to take action, they can make a charge or complaint and we will look into it,” Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said on 29th June 2018 in his press conference in Jakarta in reference to why no action has been taken against Taib.
This is certainly an unusual excuse because in the past the Malaysian police took action against ‘enemies of the government’ even when no police reports were lodged. The way the Malaysian police get around this ‘problem’ is for a police officer to lodge a police report and then action is taken based on that police report by the police officer.
