My name is Michael Ring Jok.
I come from the Kenyah tribes.
Michael Jok is an indigenous leader in Sarawak in Malaysian Borneo - and his family have
lived in the rainforested Belaga River region for generations.
I know where my father's land is.
I know where.
On which stream.
On which river.
My parent farm.
So in order to recognise that basically what they do is besides building, a small hut on
the land, they will plant trees, for example, fruit trees, like durian, rambutan and any
other fruit trees, that can last.
But in recent years, indigenous people like Michael have struggled to defend themselves
against timber and palm oil companies trying to turn them off their traditional land.
Now, Michael is fighting back.
Modern technology is allowing his community to map their indigenous land for the first
time.
The new technology with drones, or even the satellite.
Just make life much easier for us.
We locate where the logging and all the oil palms, or wherever mountains, or very important
location, historical place, where we cannot reach.
And activists are finding new sources of support on social media.
“Stop the chop.”
But the forces they’re up against are fighting back - finding new ways of their own to try
and gain control of the narrative.
Whether they're privately hired by the companies, or whether they’re state actors the output
is the same.
Their role is basically to paint or to provide the narrative of the State.
I’m Jacqui Wakefield - and this is BBC Trending’s Power series.
We’re looking at how power is being used - and misused - online around the world.
This is the sound of protest as community members in the Baram region rally against
the bull dozing of their longhouse, the centre point of the community.
Scenes like this have been taking place since the 1980s, when timber companies first came
to villages like Michael’s.
Then - in the mid 2000s - the drive for cheap, more sustainable fuel created a huge demand
for palm oil, accelerating deforestation in Malaysia and Indonesia.
While palm oil has lifted some out of poverty, many locals have not seen pay-offs - and instead
have witnessed only environmental destruction on their traditional land.
So usually they will come to the village and say that: “Oh, government has given us the
license.
So therefore we have rights to cut the trees, we have right to develop the land.”
For centuries, indigenous communities have relied on oral history - passing down stories
of their land to younger generations - to demarcate their territory.
However, when it comes to gaining wider recognition, the boundaries can be hard to prove.
That’s where mapping comes in.
Michael helps to lead these efforts on the ground.
I know where the boundary of my longhouse, based on the river.
The one downriver and upstream.
I know basically where it is without even going into the ground.
So what we call whatever we have in the mind is now put into practical by going into the
ground.
Using new tech, indigenous groups like Michael’s, backed by international NGOs, are now mapping
out their lands.
Techniques like GPS, detailed satellite imagery and in some cases drone photography, are all
employed to document the land as accurately as possible.
The maps don’t have legal force on their own, but activists, like Annina Aeberli, from
Swiss-based NGO Bruno Manser Funds, say they make it harder for companies to dispute community
claims particularly when confronted on the ground.
The land claims they are no longer abstract and vague, but they are concrete because the
communities can say, look, this here is our land, and so suddenly these kind of vague
claims become real and communities have something to support their claims.
Communities can also monitor logging activities using remote sensing, which includes cameras
or alerts that help them detect when a company is in their claimed territory.
Often communities say that logging happens in a specific area, if we have satellite images,
it's just black and white where the logging happens.
But community members told me despite the maps, it’s difficult to get their concerns
heard.
I spoke to Professor James Chin, an expert in Governance and Media in Malaysia to find
out why.
In the last 20 years the indigenous people in Sarawak were not able to get their message
out about their fight for their traditional lands, because the media traditionally in
Sarawak and the whole of Malaysia has been controlled by the governments.
He tells me timber and palm oil companies have a close relationship with the media.
They are very often the same timber/plantation companies will buy advertising space in the
newspapers.
In the case of Sarawak sometimes it’s even worse, because, the biggest newspaper group
in Sarawak is also one of the major palm oil plantation players.
The Borneo Post, Sarawak’s biggest newspaper, is owned by subsidiaries of a large timber
company.
We asked the newspaper for a response to James’ claims.
In a statement, they said shareholders and directors provided guidelines to editorial
staff, which they said included direction on accurate and balanced reporting.
They also said they strived for fairness in everyday reporting.
But recently, land rights activists have found a way to get their message out.
Social media is becoming a major platform for marginalised indigenous groups around
the world to get together to support each other, as they fight for their rights and
to reclaim their heritage and traditions.
Like other activists in a social media age, local campaign groups have discovered the
power of the hashtag.
In 2021, Celine Lim, director of indigenous-led group Save Rivers, started a campaign called
#StopTheChop.
So the gist of Stop The Chop was really that to be able to actually bring the stories from
the grassroots to these international consumers.
Save Rivers alleged Malaysian Timber giant Samling was undertaking logging activities
in the Baram region of Sarawak, without proper consent from the community.
Due to the remote sensing and mapping the local community noticed Samling’s activities
quickly.
Save Rivers then posted videos, articles, and petitions online, alleging Samling had
failed to adequately consult the community, which would be in violation of Samling’s
sustainability certification.
And the campaign appeared to get to Samling.
In April 2021 - a few months after it began - the company filed a defamation suit against
Save Rivers.
The Samling Group argued that Save Rivers put them under “unwarranted scrutiny by
the world at large”.
So when we received the first letter, the letter it actually demanded for us to take
down eight of those impugn articles
and to also publicly apologise that our report and our documentations were defamatory in
nature.
They were suing Save Rivers for five million ringgit, that’s over one million US dollars.
For a small organisation like ours, five million ringgit goes a long way.
We were definitely haunted with the fact that we were going to go bankrupt.
While the case was ongoing, satellite pictures appeared to show Samling building roads for
logging activities and entering culturally sensitive areas.
It prompted a response from affected communities in the Baram region.
In this video, local people are arguing with officials after setting up a blockade to stop
further logging activity.
After this, some members of the community say they were sent letters by Samling threatening
legal action.
I’ve been shown two of these letters.
They are written on Samling letter headed paper and say that Samling reserves the right
to take legal action for defamation.
Annina from the Bruno Manser Funds tells me the impact this had.
It really had an intimidating factor.
It is very scary.
If you receive a letter like this from a really powerful company that has control over your
territory.
In a statement, Samling denied sending letters to the community, saying the company’s legal
correspondence was directed to Save Rivers.
Meanwhile, in response to Samling’s litigation, a new hashtag was born.
The stop the chop campaign was followed by a Stop The Slapp campaign
Strategic Litigation Against Public Prosecution, or SLAPP suits, are lawsuits attempting to
intimidate or silence those speaking out.
These have been used by corporations globally as they attempt to defend their interests.
The UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples and the one on human rights
defenders,
they said that the lawsuit against Save Rivers may be classified as a SLAPP and was designed
to silence Save Rivers from speaking out.
Annina told me the role social media played in getting international support.
Social media was a very important tool to spread the message that Save Rivers has been
sued because everybody internationally is becoming more and more aware that strategic
lawsuits against public participation are a problem.
But as activists have migrated online, so too have those trying to counter their narratives.
As the Samling case gained traction, mysterious accounts began to crop up across social media.
James Chin says he believes they are set up by those representing timber and palm oil
interests.
So what this has forced, those companies, it forced them to set up their own social
media team.
It forced them to fight on a terrain or platform where they don't have a distinct advantage
anymore, where their wealth doesn't really matter that much.
The only advantage they have is that they have the ability to hire cyber troopers.
Cyber troopers, James says, are people paid to disseminate certain narratives on social
media.
Whether they're privately hired by the companies, or whether they’re state actors the output
is the same.
Their role is basically to paint or to provide the narrative of the State to provide a very,
very positive picture of what is happening.
James pointed out some of these accounts to me.
All of them had anonymous pictures, and they were often just a few months old.
They predominantly posted about land rights, often saying things like “the indigenous
activists are anti-development”.
So they tend to provide counter factual stuff to negative postings.
So, for example, there might be a posting about, you know a timber blockade, and in
the comments section, that individual will probably write something like these people
are breaking the law, law and order is very important.
But pressure on Samling continued to mount.
Then in March - a new voice joined the online battle but, unlike cyber troopers, they weren’t
anonymous.
Suddenly there was this indigenous advocacy NGO that started speaking in the media and
nobody before had ever heard of them.
The group was quoted by a handful of local media outlets defending Samling and a local
politician who had voiced support for their activities.
They were called Advocacy Pribumi.
So this means indigenous advocacy.
And they criticised Save Rivers.
In one article, there's a picture of a man in a polo shirt, he’s staring directly into
the camera.
His name is cited as Nigel Raymond and he’s described as the director of this NGO.
Here’s one of the quotes he gave in an interview with a newspaper, voiced by an actor.
I have lived in this community all my life and I have personally witnessed the development
and progress throughout the years because the logging industry has provided our people
with jobs.
Does Save Rivers want indigenous communities like ours to return to nomadic lifestyles
or live hand to mouth by banning logging completely?
Despite his claims that he was from the Baram community - no one we spoke to had heard of
the NGO or Nigel Raymond before the Samling case.
In fact, Nigel seems not to have any online presence outside of the NGOs social media
accounts at all.
There was also no trace online of this NGO before they spoke about Samling.
So I looked into their registrations.
On the 13th of March last year, a few days before their first media appearance, the domain
for their website was registered and an account was created on Facebook.
The registered website creator has an email address belonging to Maliquest - a public
relations firm based in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur.
Maliquest has a slick website boasting a number of high-profile clients and campaigns.
One of their clients was the Malaysian Vape Industry - in Maliquest’s marketing materials,
they said they’d set up an advocacy website called Advokasi of Vape.
While they don’t mention Advokasi Pribumi, it seems to be a similar strategy.
James Chin says creating an organisation that has the appearance of a grassroots campaign
- can be helpful in countering certain narratives.
If you can get an actual person to speak on your behalf, and that person is not anonymous
it’s somebody who comes up openly and speak on behalf of the company or the State, obviously
that brings a lot of credibility into the sort of narratives they’re trying to promote.
We wrote to Maliquest asking them about the allegations that they set up the NGO called
Advokasi Pribumi.
They did not respond.
We wrote to Advokasi Pribumi and Nigel Raymond to ask them about allegations that they are
not a genuine organisation.
We didn’t hear anything back.
However, their website now has a statement on it responding to other reporting about
them which they say accused them of “being a front for Samling Group without providing
any proof.”
They also stated that their “limited funds come from individuals who support Sarawak’s
sustainable forest management agenda”.
In a statement, Samling told us it had no affiliation to Advokasi Pribumi, nor, it said,
had it engaged the services of Maliquest.
In September last year, Samling surprised activists by withdrawing the case.
This is the sound of the community singing in celebration outside the courthouse.
In the end Save Rivers didn't have to delete any of their communications.
and they didn't have to apologise as Samling requested, they didn't have to pay anything
to Samling.
So this is a huge victory.
As we looked around, there was a sense of celebration in the air.
Definitely a sense of relief.
Celine says maps and satellite tracking played a huge role in bolstering their claims, and
it gave them the confidence to stand their ground against Malaysia’s biggest timber
company.
In its statement to the BBC, Samling said the company strictly adhered to certification
standards for sustainable forest management under the Malaysian Timber Certification Council.
They said ”active engagement with communities forms a fundamental aspect of [their] operations”,
and was also a “moral obligation”.
It stated litigation with Save Rivers was “amicably settled” and had no further
comment on the case.
Samling also denied awareness of anonymous social media accounts posting positively about
their role in the community.
We also wrote to the government asking them about the allegations of the use of cyber
troopers and the control of media in Sarawak.
They haven’t replied.
For some, having Samling withdraw their case against Save Rivers marks a turning of the
tide in the battle for land rights, as communities find empowerment in new technology.
Thirty years ago It was very difficult to bring information from the rainforest to the world.
People had to go there.
Now, it's it's a lot easier with technology to understand what happens.
And I think this brings a lot more attention to the situation.
But Annina says that while tech is proving an indispensable tool, at the end of the day
it depends on the strength of the community on the ground.
Without an active community, logging cannot be stopped on the ground.
Even if you have the best technology.
And for Michael, there’s a long way to go before indigenous claims are more widely accepted,
but he remains hopeful for the future.
But are we going to give up?
No, we're not going to give up.
So we continue to educate our people so that our people can make claim over the indigenous
land.
That’s it for this edition of BBC Trending’s ‘Power’ series reported by me, Jacqui
Wakefield and produced by Olivia Lang.
It was mixed by Hal Haines and edited by Flora Carmichael.
If you want to get in touch about this episode then you can do so by emailing me at jacqui.wakefield.ext@bbc.co.uk.
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