Missing Swiss activist remembered 10 years on
A decade after the disappearance of Swiss activist Bruno Manser in Borneo, a Malaysian delegation has met the Swiss foreign ministry to discuss human rights there.
The six-member delegation from the Malaysian state of Sarawak, which controls part of Borneo, and three representatives of the Bruno Manser Fund met with human security experts at the Swiss foreign ministry on Friday.
A spokesman for the ministry said the meeting had been an opportunity for the delegation to raise concerns about the island. Lukas Straumann, director of the Basel-based charity, said forests in Borneo were more under threat from logging than ever.
A public ceremony is being held in memory of Manser in Basel on Saturday.
Among those expected to attend are Thomas Stocker of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Manser’s sister Monika Niederberger and Basel City representatives.
Manser was a long-term campaigner for the Penan, with whom he lived between 1984 and 1990. He encouraged them to resist loggers by means of peaceful road blockades.
On his return to Switzerland, he set up a charity to publicise the Penan cause.
Manser disappeared on a return visit to Sarawak in 2000, and was officially declared dead in 2005.
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