Why Not Watch?
Don’t worry world! We always support watching documentaries legally and many of the films we recommend on Influence Film Club are available where you live too. We suggest using your preferred method for watching a film – such as searching iTunes, Amazon, Netflix, VOD platforms (video-on-demand), or renting/buying a DVD.
Find out more about starting a film club!
Filmed over 25 years, THE BORNEO CASE reveals how the Borneo rainforest was stripped of its natural resources, and how billions of dollars of illegal profits solicited by the Chief Minister of Sarawak State in Malaysia were money laundered with the assistance of the largest global banks into offshore accounts and property portfolios all over the world.
Director: Dylan Williams, Erik Pauser
Get informed about the current situation of deforestation in Borneo and around the globe from online resources like The Borneo Project, Sarawak Report and Global Forest Watch.
Donate to Sarawak Report! Every dollar helps to continue impacting the political debates over corruption and deforestation in Malaysia.
Look for the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) label when purchasing wood products and help protect forests. The Forest Stewardship Council mission is to promote environmentally sound, socially beneficial and economically prosperous management of the world’s forests.
Become a member of environmental conservation groups like Sierra Club, the World Wildlife Fund, or the National Audubon Society to help ensure our rainforests, its animals and the indigenous people that call them home all survive for generations to come.
On our last show of the current season, we report to you from on the ground as the election unfolds. From Tamin, from Layar, from Krian, from Dijeh and elsewhere, we hear from listeners who have cast their votes and cast their eyes around the voting process.
Listen to the radio show at Radio Free Sarawak.
Visit the Interactive Map where you can select an area to analyze or subscribe to. Learn about land use and forest change in Malaysia on Global Forest Watch.
“This new investigation by Global Witness reveals the systemic corruption and illegality at the heart of government in Sarawak, Malaysia’s largest state. This film, shot undercover during the investigation, reveals for the first time the instruments used by members of the ruling Taib family and its local lawyers to skirt Malaysia’s laws and taxes, creaming off huge profits at the expense of indigenous people and hiding their dirty money in Singapore.”
Watch the film on Youtube.
“The Borneo Project has been working over the last twenty years to support indigenous and frontline communities in Borneo.”
Find out more here.
“The island’s hunter-gatherers are losing their home to the unquenchable global demand for timber and palm oil”
Continue reading on the Smithsonian.
“U.S. government sources characterize the ruler of Malaysia’s Sarawak as ‘highly corrupt’ and plagued with conflicts of interest, according to secret cables released today by Wikileaks.”
Continue reading here.
“Money Logging investigates what former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has called ‘probably the biggest environmental crime of our times’—the massive destruction of the Borneo rainforest by Malaysian loggers. Historian and campaigner Lukas Straumann goes in search not only of the lost forests and the people who used to call them home, but also the network of criminals who have earned billions through illegal timber sales and corruption.”
Visit the website of the book.
“For how long can we realistically expect to have oil? And which dwindling element is essential to plant growth?”
Find out on the Guardian.
“Sarawak has lost more than 90% of its “primary” forests to logging and has the fastest rate of deforestation in Asia. Sarawak has only 0.5% of the world’s tropical forest but accounted for 25% of tropical-log exports in 2010. As timber stocks have become depleted, the loggers have moved into the palm-oil business, clearing peat-swamp forests to make way for plantations. The deforestation has been accompanied by abuses against indigenous groups, including harassment and äillegal evictions.”
Continue reading on The Economist.
“Clare Rewcastle Brown is public enemy number one of the Malaysian state. But she isn’t bothered. The investigative journalist just laughs at the irony. Her father was head of special branch in what is Malaysia today when it was still a British colony. Now his daughter is their prime target.”
Continue reading on International Business Times.
