Bruno Manser Fonds
Heuberg 25
4051 Basel
Switzerland
phone +41 61 261 94 74
fax +41 61 261 94 73
updated 2001-05-25
Documentation "Totem for Bruno Manser"
Text for Bruno
Personal Recollections of Bruno Manser
Bill Mankin, Global Forest Policy Project, United States of America, May 2001
Bruno was a man who was so gentle, so unassuming and slight of build that, in a crowd of only three people he could fade into the wallpaper. Yet every time he greeted me after a period of absence, his smile would crack his face so wide-open that it would melt my heart. In fact, my heart would melt every time I was around Bruno. He was clearly in possession of something most people didn't have, and if you were open to looking for it, it was quite evident. And he was more than willing to share it with you. It was an unfathomably deep and self-less appreciation for life, and an unbelievable lack of personal ego. If you could feel it, it was capable of changing you.
Bruno's undying mission was to save the forests and first peoples of Sarawak, and everything else was a distraction. In the early 1990s he came to Geneva once when I was at the United Nations trying to influence the re-negotiation of the International Tropical Timber Agreement (ITTA). Bruno didn't care about the ITTA or the UN, but he knew a lot of government officials from around the world would be there talking about forests, and he wanted to tell them about the plight of Sarawak. It was a difficult mission for him, since he knew little of intergovernmental diplomacy or UN procedures. He just assumed that if he told his story they would listen. But it wasn't that easy.
First, he was visibly uncomfortable even being in the UN building, a ponderous institutional behemoth with miles of dark corridors and hundreds of suit-and-tie officials. In fact, Bruno hated it so much that he actually left the building to sit out in the grass and sun every chance he got. He considered such claustrophobic spaces to be simply unnatural, inhuman, and intolerable.
Second, to deliver his message to the ITTA negotiators would require Bruno to speak into a microphone to a roomful of 300 people who didn't want to hear it. So he came up with a remarkable means of making his comments memorable - he delivered his heartfelt plea in 1-2 minutes, a short story of the Penan people and their threatened forests, and then he held a small cassette recorder up to the microphone and clicked the switch to release the plaintive cries of a Sarawak forest gibbon he had recorded. Never had I seen such a brilliant breach of negotiating-room protocol. Everyone in the room turned to face Bruno as the gibbon cried out its plea to save the forests. Bruno just assumed they would understand; I had warned him in advance that they might not, and that his action might not be appreciated. Quite obviously what I thought was irrelevant, as it should have been. Bruno did what only Bruno could. I am so glad he did, and I will never forget that moment.
Bruno gave everything he had to save the forests and peoples of Sarawak. I need to repeat that: he gave everything he had - all his time, all his energy, his entire identity was submerged into his mission. He also readily sacrificed his own health and well-being, especially if he thought it would help the cause. Another of my trips to Geneva coincided with Bruno's long hunger strike in the Bern town square, so I took the train up to see him. Since I did my own environmental work using very different methods, I didn't know what to expect. My own approach to influencing public policy involved lobbying, debate and dialogue; sometimes it had an effect and sometimes (or perhaps often) it did not. I assumed Bruno was unnecessarily putting himself at risk for a pretty unlikely result, so I was very concerned about him. But once again, as soon as I saw him, extremely weak and lying on a blanket on the cobblestones, I realized that there was no other way for Bruno to fulfill his mission. He did not see another option. Surely, he thought, if they can only see the sacrifice one person is willing to make, they will listen and understand.
Although I've always thought of myself as very dedicated to the cause of 'saving the planet', in Bruno's presence I felt somehow inadequate. Clearly I did not have Bruno's courage, and nowhere near his dedication. Nor can I think of another person who could stand as tall as Bruno in this regard. He made me feel humble - a very important feeling. Bruno's greatest legacy is that he reminds us forever that, until the forests and forest peoples are safe, we are simply not doing enough. And of course he's right. Hopefully we will now listen and understand - and act.
For such a small and gentle man, Bruno, you have left such a giant, yet very warm, hole in my heart. Thank you for everything you ever did.
Wed 9th May 2001