The blog Sarawak Report, which is also known as “Bash-Taib-Mahmud-and-family” Report, made a startling announcement yesterday.
It decided to reveal the face of the blog that is widely regarded as the opposition’s main online media vehicle for this year’s Sarawak State election. The face is none other than the sister-in-law of former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Yes, her! Who?
And although the revelation seemed more about the less popular spin-off radio show (Radio Free Sarawak) of the blog, the bombshell, for me at least, was that finally someone has claimed to be behind Sarawak Report. Actually, I’m still not sure who’s REALLY behind the blog, which looks very professional and well-funded, indeed.
I only hope it’s people who really, really care about the progress and prosperity of Sarawak and not groups trying to dictate the course of our future from London and/or the capital of 1Malaysia. I can only hope and pray.
As for the voice of the opposition radio show that has failed to live up to expectations, I wish him all the best and congratulate him for getting the gig of a lifetime. I’m sure he will be able to cope well with the British pubs and British ladies. Unless of course, he’s still so torn up about leaving his poor family behind, in which case I’m confident that most of his time will be spent solely focused on thinking about “free-ing” Sarawak and not so much about living the life and telling rainforest stories in London town.
An editor of Old Sarawak Tribune is supposed to be part of the creative writing team at the blog Sarawak Report, but due to my limited knowledge on the matter, I would not be able to confirm that yet, Lest I end up writing creative myself, and publishing controversial illustrations, as well.
In any case, if both happen to be in London to support the opposition cause, good for them! Both have an axe to grind and now with a very focused and well-organised opposition spin-machine funding them, they get to kill two birds with one blowpipe dart.
For now, we shall all wait and see the impending impact of the revelations.
P.S. I just saw Star (Sarawak & Sabah) Editor-in-Chief M.Rajah’s fb post advertising that his newspaper will be coming up with a story regarding the revelations, so beg, borrow or steal today’s copy of Star.
Gordon Brown’s sister-in-law tackles corruption in Borneo
David Cohen
22 Feb 2011
In a flat above a restaurant in Covent Garden, an investigative reporter called Clare and a tribesman from Borneo covered in tattoos prepare to transmit their daily revolutionary radio broadcast deep into the Borneo jungle.
They make for an unlikely double act – she is a white, middle-aged Englishwoman, and he the proud grandson of a Dayak headhunter who broadcasts under the pseudonym Papa Orang Utan. Their aim is no less outlandish: to expose the alleged corruption of Taib Mahmud, chief minister of the Malaysian state of Sarawak on the island of Borneo 6,500 miles from London, and bring an end to his 30-year rule.
“This is Radio Free Sarawak,” begins Papa Orang Utan, donning his headphones to interview a village headman who has been forcibly removed from his land and who, quite remarkably, speaks to them on a mobile phone from the edge of the Borneo rainforest. Clare briefs Papa: “Make sure you ask if he knows that it’s chief minister Taib who has stolen their land? And get who he’ll be voting for!”
Until now the identity of the “pirates” behind Radio Free Sarawak has been a closely guarded secret – and for good reason. Scandal-plagued Taib, 74, is one of the world’s most ruthless and wealthiest men – richer allegedly than the Sultan of Brunei, whose independent country lies alongside – and locals who oppose him can feel the full force of his retribution.
But today is a watershed: the duo have bravely decided to out themselves ahead of the upcoming Sarawak elections, expected in April. Indeed, the Evening Standard can reveal that the mystery Englishwoman who set up Radio Free Sarawak four months ago and who brought out the tattooed tribesman – real name Peter John Jaban – to front her broadcasts is in fact Clare Rewcastle Brown, sister-in-law of former prime minister Gordon Brown.
The last time she was in the public eye was in May 2009 when she published a letter defending the then prime minister’s cleaning arrangements in the wake of the expenses scandal. Her piece, “The true story of Gordon Brown, the cleaner and my husband”, laid out their “very ordinary shared cleaning arrangements” and explained why The Telegraph’s front page “scoop” was groundless.
“My poor husband Andrew,” she recalls, “was the face on the front page on the first day of the expenses scandal, which was pretty damn unfair given that Gordon’s arrangement with the cleaner was later judged wholly legitimate. The reporters arrived on our doorstep thinking they’d ‘got Gordon’ but they hadn’t done their due diligence and when we presented them with the truth, they didn’t want to hear it.”
Today she sees less of her husband’s older brother, “Gordon and Sarah being mainly up in Scotland“, but they are “a close-knit family” and “Gordon is hugely supportive,” she says.
Rewcastle Brown, 51, born in Sarawak to British parents in the days before the former British colony was handed over to Malaysia, lived in the region until the age of eight, and she is the author of the hard-hitting Sarawak Report, a hitherto anonymous blog that gets 18,000 hits a day.
“English is still the unifying language in Sarawak and I use my blog and broadcasts to expose the outrageous deforestation which has seen 95 per cent of Sarawak’s rainforest cut down and replaced by logging and palm oil plantations which have enriched Taib and his family,” she says. “What’s more, my investigations indicate some of the Taib family money is right here in London and includes a lucrative property portfolio in the heart of our capital.”
Her work, she adds, is also about “giving the 2.5 million oppressed people of Sarawak a choice”.
“The leader of the opposition party, a charismatic human rights lawyer called Baru Bian, inspires hope of real change in the upcoming election, but scandalously only one-third of the electorate are registered to vote and the corrupt Malaysian government turn a blind eye because Taib always delivers them Sarawak, their richest state.”
She says their decision to go public was prompted by death threats posted to the Sarawak Report website and by the mysterious fatality of her chief whistleblower in America. “Before Christmas, Taib’s disaffected US aide Ross Boyert was found dead in a Los Angeles hotel room with a plastic bag around his head. The inquest is still pending but there was a sense that Peter and I could be in danger. Rather than hide, we’ve decided to come out fighting.”
She kicks off her leather boots and laughs. “The irony is that Taib and his people think we’re a huge operation but there are just five of us with a couple of laptops and a mixer. Advances in MP3 technology mean that these days shortwave radio is cheap and easy to do. We’ve been so effective that Taib’s people believe we’re funded by George Soros, whose foundation funds Radio Free Burma.”
Her outfit – started in October from the dining room of her loft in Victoria where she lives “in shabby dilapidation” with Andrew and their two teenage children – costs less than £10,000 a month, she says. Initially she funded it herself but she’s since roped in some “better-off friends” who help out “anonymously”. “Not Gordon,” she hastens to add. “His support is strictly moral!”
Her passionate dedication to a cause 99 per cent of Londoners have never heard of sometimes causes strains, she admits, with friends and family. “But I honestly believe that Taib is probably one of the worst environmental criminals on the planet and that he has taken huge amounts from the country of my birth.”
She smiles. “He never saw me coming. When he set up his property companies in 1982, he could never have imagined that some mad woman sitting in her kitchen in London would unravel his property empire simply by scrutinising company reports online.”
As an investigative journalist who started with the BBC World Service in 1983, she is better equipped than most to uncover the wealth of the Mahmud family.
“My investigations have indicated that Taib and his family have a property empire in Canada, the US and the UK. Funds have been generated by Taib selling off rainforests with some of the money going through the British Virgin Islands.”
The Evening Standard put these allegations to those who are behind the companies and they were denied.
Rewcastle Brown’s passion for the rainforests of Sarawak was kindled as a child when she accompanied her mother, Karis, a midwife, into the jungle. Back then, Sarawak had the most biodiverse rainforest in the world with 3,000 species of trees, 15,000 plants, 420 birds and 221 mammals.
“My mother would drag me to remote clinics to show the indigenous Dayaks what a healthy baby should look like,” she recalls.
“Everyone in those villages sleeps in one long-house and my mother frequently saved the lives of their sick babies. As a kid, my first friends were the local children and we used to climb trees and run barefoot, dodging the odd scorpion.”
The family came to the UK when Rewcastle Brown was eight and she attended a private boarding school and later finished her masters in international relations at the LSE. It would be 38 years before she returned to Sarawak on a media trip where the degradation of the rainforest – so evident from the air – shocked her to the core.
In 2008 she went back to report on a by-election and secretly film companies clearing rainforest for oil palm. That was when she “fell into a peat bog and nearly died”, and it was also when she met Jaban, 46, an election monitor fired from Taib’s state-controlled radio for allowing callers to criticise the chief minister.
Last year she invited Jaban to become the voice of Radio Free Sarawak in London. It was a drastic step because it meant that while Taib stays in power, Jaban can never go back.
“I miss my four children, I miss my home,” he says, tears streaming. He looks vulnerable, like a fish out of water, but he suddenly straightens. “I am prepared to die for this cause,” he says. “In the days of my grandfather, you had to bring a decent clutch of heads as a sign of your masculinity when you got married. Today things have changed but you still have to be a man.”
What are their chances of success? Rewcastle Brown ponders for a moment. “People say our man hasn’t got a prayer in the election and that Taib will intimidate voters as he always does but I think our reports are having a huge effect and that there’s a groundswell for change.”
She smiles thinly. “You’ve got to take heart from what is happening in the Middle East to rulers who seemed equally immovable until just a few weeks ago.”
London Evening Standard
rimau atas kerusi
February 24, 2011
How STAR viewed the revelations:
Thursday February 24, 2011
Karim wants action against brains behind rogue radio, Sarawak Report
By RINTOS MAIL
rintos@thestar.com.my
KUCHING: The people behind Radio Free Sarawak and Sarawak Report have been revealed at last.
They are Clare Rewcastle Brown, the sister-in-law of former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and Peter John Jaban, an Iban activist known as Papa Orang Utan to his listeners.
Rewcastle Brown is also the author of the hard-hitting Sarawak Report — a blog that has been making several allegations against the Chief Minister —that gets 18,000 hits a day. They went public in a report by tabloid London Evening Standard on Wednesday, said an article by The Malaysian Insider.
The independent radio station has also been critical of Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud.
The tabloid said they had decided to expose themselves as they wanted to come out fighting ahead of the state election expected to be held in April.
Free broadcast: Rewcastle Brown and Jaban at their work station in a flat above a restaurant in Convent Garden, London. — Courtesy of London Evening Standard
Sarawak Barisan Nasional Backbenchers Club chairman Abdul Karim Rahman Hamzah said as the people responsible had been revealed, the authorities must investigate them and bring them to book.
“What they have been doing is malicious and dangerous. They have campaigned not only against the Chief Minister but also the nation.
“They have launched an underground radio station, inciting one race to go against another, which is an offence in Malaysia,” he told Star Sarawak.
Jaban was an Iban DJ, starting with CATs FM in 1996, said former CATs FM staff Roland Duncan Kelabu.
He said Jaban left CATs FM sometime in 1999 to pursue his own business.
When told that he was one of the persons behind Radio Free Sarawak, Roland said: “I’m not surprise.”
The London Evening Standard claimed it had visited the Radio Free Sarawak studio in a flat above a restaurant in Covent Garden in London, from where they broadcast around the world.
Rewcastle Brown, 51, was said to be born in Sarawak to British parents and she lived in the state until the age of eight.
“English is still the unifying language in Sarawak and I use my blog and broadcasts to expose the outrageous deforestation,” she said.
Rewcastle Brown told the tabloid that there were just five of them with a couple of laptops and a mixer.
“Advances in MP3 technology meant that these days shortwave radio is cheap and easy to do. We’ve been so effective that Taib’s people believe we’re funded by George Soros, whose foundation funds Radio Free Burma,” she told the tabloid.
She denied that former British PM Brown had funded her work but she said: “His support is strictly moral.”
An investigative journalist who started with the BBC World Service in 1983, her passion for the rainforests of Sarawak was kindled as a child when she accompanied her mother Karis, a midwife, into the jungle.
Rewcastle Brown left for the UK when she was eight and it was 38 years later that she returned to Sarawak on a media trip where the deforestation shocked her.
In 2008, she went back to report on a by-election and secretly filmed companies clearing rainforest for oil palm. Last year, she invited Jaban to become the voice of Radio Free Sarawak in London.
ata nyuga
March 13, 2011
Now it is time for people to make decisions to change the Sarawak Government. The present government is seen as no longer able to look after the welfare of its people. This present government is to raise money for their state alone. Do not let this continue monopolist clinched all the wealth in this country. Only to change the government just to stop their activities. The present government has been too long ruled the country for Sarawak and Sabah, the people were oppressed. The NCR lands invaded indiscriminately without regard to the importance of the people. Let us all unite the people of Sarawak. We unite the goals, efforts and energy to change the current government to the new government. Only cooperation and reconciliation can only achieve our vision of it.
rimau atas kerusi
March 13, 2011
ata nyuga, you have to realise the State government we have now may not be perfect, but it is the best on offer. And it’s not as bad as some people make it out to be, really. Don’t forget how far we’ve come from being the poorest state in Malaysia, and now on our way to become the richest through the Sarawak Corridor of Renewable Energy (SCORE). Whatever opposition we have right now, cannot even compare, when it comes to providing what’s best for the majority of the people of our great State. The opposition in Sarawak supposedly have formed a coalition, but they also seem so obsessed with their respective parties that no one can believe they’re able to act as a unified force. All they can do is launch personal attacks on our Chief Minister and offer populist promises to the people. Promises that I don’t believe they can even keep, without making Sarawak and Malaysia bankrupt in the process. As for the NCR issue, in my opinion our people need to adopt a different view of how to harness the potential of our land. Of course I understand the close bond we have with our land, and that is why debates about it tend to be very contentious and emotions usually come into play at some point. I’m no expert on the issue, so I won’t pretend to be one.
collateral damage
December 18, 2011
Retraction and Apology – Ridgeford Properties Limited
By Linus Rees
On 28 February 2011, Fitzrovia News published an article linking Ridgeford Properties Limited to Abdul Taib Mahmud, the Chief Minister of Sarawak, Malaysia. The article made a number of unfounded allegations, including claims that Ridgeford was part of a multi-billion property empire controlled by the Chief Minister of Sarawak, that this empire gained from the proceeds of illegal timber in the Malaysian State, and that Ridgeford’s Bolsover Street development was part-funded by such illegally obtained money.
We now accept that these allegations are entirely without foundation, Fitzrovia News is pleased to confirm that Ridgeford Properties Limited is not funded by the Chief Minister of Sarawak, who has no business interest in or control over the company.
We apologise unreservedly to Ridgeford Properties Limited, as well as its directors and staff, for the distress and damage caused by our article. As Ridgeford Properties have been a stakeholder in the area for over 16 years, it has kindly agreed to waive any claim for damages on the basis that it is a supporter of Fitzrovia News as a positive force in the community.
http://news.fitzrovia.org.uk/2011/03/28/retraction-and-apology-ridgeford-properties-limited/