Bruno Manser Fonds
Heuberg 25
4051 Basel
Switzerland
phone +41 61 261 94 74
fax +41 61 261 94 73
updated 2001-06-30
Basel, 23 May 2001
Press Release
Totem for Bruno Manser
Texte Français | Deutsche Texte
Today, 23 May 2001, it is exactly 1 year since his friends last received a sign from Bruno Manser. With every day that passes, the likelihood is fading that Bruno Manser will ever return to us.
That is why we are gathered together today on the Bärenplatz in Bern, where in 1993 Bruno fasted for 60 days for a ban on imports of timber from Sarawak/Malaysia. To keep alive the memory of our dear friend and campaigner for human rights, respect for creation and peaceful co-operation and co-existence between all cultures and lifestyles, and for the indigenous peoples and of course the Penan - his second family in the rainforest of Sarawak/Malaysia on Borneo.
Photo: Ruedi Suter
And so we are here today to express the absolute urgency of the concerns of this great friend of humanity in which he was perhaps ahead of his time. There is no time to lose:
The indigenous peoples of this earth (300 million members, 95% of global cultural diversity) are today, at the dawn of the 3rd millennium, all on the brink of disaster, many of them are facing imminent extinction (e.g. the Penan)
Never in human memory has biodiversity been so rapidly decimated, the death of species is accelerating at a frightening pace (e.g. the destruction of the tropical rainforests)
The biosphere is threatened as never before (climate change)
The threat is particularly acute for the people of the rainforest. Many of these forest people, hunters and gatherers, but also traditional small farmers, are facing imminent extinction if action is not taken now! Bruno experienced this for himself and endeavoured untiringly to hold back the tide - now he himself has disappeared.
It is now up to us to continue Bruno`s campaign, and each of us can make his or her contribution.
The BMF hereby challenges, and all the signatories hereby challenge - also in the name of Bruno Manser - all responsible authorities, governments and private companies, to take the necessary measures to protect the indigenous peoples and virgin forests of this earth without delay, at both foreign policy and economic level, and to ratify immediately or finally to implement existing instruments such as the UN-ILO Convention 169, prohibiting trade in tropical timber from over-felling, according to ITTO and the universal human rights!
Documentation "Totem for Bruno Manser"Switzerland, Bern, Bärenplatz 23. - 27. Mai 2001 |
Brunos friends carry the totem from the Botanical Garden to the Baerenplatz,
May 23rd, 2001