Survival International has named its ‘Top 5 Hall of Shame’ – the key companies violating tribal peoples’ rights worldwide. But Vedanta Resources has missed out by a whisker – more by default, than by design. After the Indian government scrapped its mining project in the Niyamgiri Hills of Orissa, it is not getting the chance to trample on tribal peoples.
But there are others who continue to do so with impunity around the world. Survival International has named them in its Top 5 Hall of Shame, released on the occasion of Columbus Day (October 12/ October 11 in US). The culprits are GDF Suez, Perenco/ Repsol, Samling, Wilderness Safaris, and Yaguarete Pora.
Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said, “These companies really do symbolise everything Columbus signifies today – the quest for money and profit at the expense of people who simply want to be left in peace, on their own land. Surely, 518 years after Columbus’s arrival in the Americas and the decimation of the indigenous inhabitants, it’s time we treated the world’s tribal peoples with a little respect?”
The five companies named by Survival, in fact, show utter disdain.
GDF Suez
Perenco/ Repsol
Anglo-French oil company Perenco, and Spanish-Argentine oil giant Repsol-YPF are exploiting the territory of uncontacted Indians in northern Peru. Both are operating in an area where uncontacted Indians live. Perenco’s suggestions to its workers if they are attacked included, ‘Scare and repel them, or tell them to go home’.
Survival estimates there are 15 uncontacted tribes in Peru. All of them live in the most remote, isolated regions of the Amazon rainforest. All of these peoples face terrible threats – to their land, livelihoods and, ultimately, their lives. If nothing is done, they are likely to disappear entirely. International law recognises the Indians’ land as theirs, just as it recognises their right to live on it as they want to. That law is not being respected by the Peruvian government or the companies who are invading tribal land.
More than 70 per cent of the Peruvian Amazon has been leased by the government to oil companies. Much of this includes regions inhabited by uncontacted tribes. Oil exploration is particularly dangerous to the Indians because it opens up previously remote areas to other outsiders, such as loggers and colonists. They use the roads and paths made by the exploration teams to enter.
In the past, oil exploration has led to violent and disastrous contact with isolated Indians. In the early 1980s, exploration by Shell led to contact with the isolated Nahua tribe. Within a few years more than 50% of the Nahua had died. Several oil companies are now working in areas where uncontacted Indians live, including the territories of the Cacataibo and Nanti tribes. These companies are Perenco, which has taken over Barrett Resources, Repsol-YPF and Petrolifera.
Samling
This Malaysian logging company is destroying the forests of the hunter-gatherer Penan tribe in Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo. Many Penan have been arrested and imprisoned for mounting blockades against the company. James Ho, Chief Operating Officer of Samling, has said, ‘The Penan have no rights to the forest.’
The hunter-gatherer Penan live in the rainforests of the interior of Sarawak, in the Malaysian part of the island of Borneo. Traditionally nomadic, most of the 10-12,000 Penan now live in settled communities, but continue to rely on the forest for their existence. Some still live largely nomadically. The Sarawak state government does not recognize the Penan’s rights to their land. Since the 1970s, it has backed large-scale commercial logging on tribal land across Sarawak.
In 1987, many Penan communities protested against the logging of their land by blockading the roads cut though the forest by the logging companies. More than a hundred Penan were arrested. The Penan have kept up their resistance, and continue to mount blockades against the companies. Some have managed to prevent the companies from entering their land, but others have seen much of their forest devastated. The Malaysian government claims that Sarawak is being logged sustainably – but in fact its forests are being destroyed at one of the fastest rates in the world.
The Malaysian logging companies, which include Samling, Interhill and Shin Yang, operate with the full backing of the state government. Some company workers have threatened the Penan with death if they continue to resist, and others are accused of raping Penan girls and women. With the loss of their forests, the Penan are being forced into poverty, and are suffering from ill health due to poor diet and polluted water.
Wilderness Safaris
This tour operator recently opened a luxury safari lodge in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, Botswana. The lodge boasts a bar and swimming pool, while the Bushmen on whose land the lodge sits are banned by the government from accessing food or water. Andy Payne, Wilderness Safaris’ CEO, responded to criticism of his lodge by saying, ‘Any Bushman who wants a glass of water can have one.’
There are 100,000 Bushmen in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Angola. They are the indigenous people of southern Africa, and have lived there for tens of thousands of years. In the middle of Botswana lies the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, a reserve created to protect the traditional territory of the 5,000 Gana, Gwi and Tsila Bushmen, and the game they depend on.
In the early 1980s, diamonds were discovered in the reserve. Soon after, government ministers went into the reserve to tell the Bushmen living there that they would have to leave because of the diamond finds. In three big clearances, in 1997, 2002 and 2005, virtually all the Bushmen were forced out. Their homes were dismantled, their school and health post were closed, their water supply was destroyed and the people were threatened and trucked away.
While the Botswana government is denying Bushmen access to water, Wilderness Safaris has opened a tourist lodge on their land, complete with bar and swimming pool. Wilderness Safaris opened the lodge after signing a lease with the government which hopes to develop tourism in the reserve. However, the lease does not acknowledge the Bushmen’s rights to use and occupy their traditional territories.
Despite opening the camp without consulting them, Wilderness Safaris claims that it does engage with the Bushmen. However, there is nothing ‘mutually beneficial’ about the Kalahari Plains Camp, which allows its guests to sip cocktails by a swimming pool while the Bushmen are struggling to find enough water to survive on their lands and banned from using their water borehole.
Wilderness Safaris uses the Bushmen to promote the camp, offering its guests an interpretive ‘Bushman walk’. Guests to the camp may be interested to know that while their walk allows them to gain ‘insights into the unique culture of this fascinating people’, the Bushmen are forced to walk up to 300 miles to fetch water.
Yaguarete Pora
Brazilian ranching company Yaguarete Pora is intent on clearing a large area of forest in the Paraguayan Chaco, even though uncontacted Ayoreo Indians are known to live there. Other members of the tribe have been claiming title to the area since 1993. Yaguarete was fined by the government for concealing the Indians’ existence, but is intent on resuming the destruction. Of the several different sub-groups of Ayoreo, the most isolated are the Totobiegosode (‘people from the place of the wild pigs’). Since 1969 many have been forced out of the forest, but some still avoid all contact with outsiders.
In 1979 and 1986 the American fundamentalist New Tribes Mission helped organise ‘manhunts’ in which large groups of Totobiegosode were forcibly brought out of the forest. Several Ayoreo died in these encounters, and others succumbed later to disease.
The greatest current threat to the Totobiegosode is Yaguarete Porá. It owns a 78,000 hectare plot in the heart of their territory, very near where uncontacted Ayoreo were recently sighted. Yaguarete plans to bulldoze most of it to create a cattle ranch – this will have a devastating effect on the Indians’ ability to continue living there.
Earlier this year, Paraguayan authorities fined the Brazilian firm for concealing key information about the existence of indigenous people in the area where it had a licence to work. Its ranchers were operating on the tribe’s land despite having their licence suspended by the Environment Ministry in August 2009 for previous illegal clearance. They were clearing the forest, the home of the Ayoreo-Totobiegosode tribe, using bulldozers alleged to belong to Jacobo Kauenhowen, owner of a large bulldozer business in a nearby Mennonite colony.
These companies have no such thing as conscience and continue to plunder lands belonging to indigenous people with impunity. To know more about this rapaciousness and how you can help, visit the Survival International website.
