Word: sarawak
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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When timber interests first came to Ngau's area in the state of Sarawak in 1977, several thousand natives lived entirely off the forests. But logging and settlement plans have reduced that number to fewer than 500 Penan tribesmen, who still cling to nomadic ways. Even these remaining nomadic clans are threatened by a powerful alliance of Japanese trading companies, merchants and local politicians, who continue to push logging operations ever deeper into the interior...
Ngau, now 30, became concerned about logging in the late 1970s when its devastating effects began to become apparent. In 1982 he set up a branch of Friends of the Earth in Sarawak to help preserve the forests the Penans call "our bank and our shops." Ngau and his colleagues became investigators, exposing links between logging companies and politicians. Later, when the Penans found the courts stacked in favor of timber interests, they took the desperate step of blockading logging roads. Ngau and Friends of the Earth provided legal help and made the Penans' plight the focus of international protests...