In a letter to Samling, the residents of Ba Jawi in the upper reaches of the Baram River said the company should “stay away from our forests and allow us to continue to live like our ancestors and carry on their legacy and culture”.

The village is part of the Gerenai Forest Management Unit (FMU) which received certification under the Malaysian Timber Certification Scheme (MTCS) in 2020.

The Penans expressed their rejection of timber extraction and forest certification in its letter to Samling in the context of the on-going surveillance audit being carried out by the Standards and Industrial Research Institute of Malaysia (Sirim) for the FMU.

Earlier this week, five civil society groups called on Sirim to cancel the MTCS certification for Gerenai FMU following a series of audit reports allegedly confirming Samling’s lack of community engagement since 2019.

In May, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) officially accepted a complaint against Samling after determining that there was “sufficient evidence” regarding violation of FSC policies, including alleged violations of traditional and human rights and destruction of high conservation value forests.

In its letter to Samling’s chief operating officer James Ho, representatives of the Penan community said: “We, the people of Ba Jawi, are the last semi-nomadic Penan in the whole of Baram. We are the guardians of the nomadic Penan culture. We herewith state that we ourselves control our forests and refuse to delegate it to Samling or any related party. We are within our rights to withhold consent for any logging on our land.”

Samling Plywood has sued a Sarawak NGO, SAVE Rivers, over alleged defamatory statements on the logging dispute.

The company is seeking an apology, an injunction stopping SAVE Rivers from reporting community claims, and RM5 million in damages.