Bruno Manser (25 August 1954 – presumed dead 10 March 2005) was a Swiss environmentalist and human rights activist. From 1984 to 1990, he stayed with the Penan people in Sarawak, Malaysia, organising rainforest blockades against timber companies. After he emerged from the forests in 1990, he engaged in public activism for rainforest preservation and the human rights of indigenous peoples, especially the Penan, which brought him into conflict with the Malaysian government. He also founded the Swiss non-governmental organization (NGO) Bruno Manser Fonds in 1991. Manser disappeared during his last journey to Sarawak in May 2000 and is presumed dead.
Early life and education Bruno Manser was born in Basel, Switzerland, on 25 August 1954, in a family of three girls and two boys. During his younger days, he was an independent thinker. His parents wanted him to become a doctor, and he studied medicine informally. Manser later completed his upper secondary school, the first in his family to do so.
At age 19, Manser spent three months in Lucerne prison because, as an ardent follower of non-violent ideologies espoused by Mahatma Gandhi (Satyagraha), he refused to participate in Switzerland's compulsory military service. After leaving prison in 1973, he worked as a sheep and cow herder at various Swiss Alpine pastures for twelve years. During this time, Manser became interested in handicrafts, therapeutics, and speleology. He laid bricks, carved leather, kept bees, and wove, dyed, and cut his own clothes and shoes. He also regularly pursued mountaineering and technical climbing.
At the age of 30, Manser went to Borneo, looking to live a simpler life.
Searching for Penans In 1983, Manser went to the Malaysian state of Terengganu and stayed with a family. In 1984, while learning more about the rainforests, Manser learned of a nomadic tribe known as the Penan. After learning more about the tribe, he decided to attempt to live amongst them for a few years and travelled to the East Malaysian state of Sarawak in 1984 on a tourist visa.
In Malaysia, Manser first joined an English caving expedition to explore Gunung Mulu National Park. After the expedition, he stepped deeper into the interior jungles of Sarawak, intending to find the "deep essence of humanity" and "the people who are still living close to their nature." However, he quickly became lost and ran out of food while exploring the jungle, then fell ill after eating a poisonous palm heart.
After these setbacks, Manser finally found Penan nomadic tribes near the headwaters of the Limbang river at Long Seridan in May 1984. Initially, the Penan people tried to ignore him. After a while, the Penan accepted him as one of their family members.
In August 1984, Manser went to Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, to obtain a visa to visit Indonesia. On the Indonesian visa, he entered Kalimantan, then illegally crossed the border back into Long Seridan. His Malaysian visa expired on 31 December 1984.
Life with the Penans
Manser learned about survival skills in the jungle and familiarised himself with the Penan's culture and language. The Penan tribal leader in Upper Limbang, named Along Sega, became Manser's mentor. During his stay with the Penan, Manser adopted their way of life. He dressed in a loincloth, hunted with a blowgun, and ate primates, snakes, and sago. Manser's decision to live as a member of the Penan was ridiculed in the West, and he was dismissed as a "White Tarzan". Within the Penan, however, Manser was known as "Laki Penan" (Penan Man), having earned the respect of the tribe that adopted him.
Manser created notebooks that were richly illustrated with drawings, notes, and 10,000 photographs during his six-year stay from 1984 to 1990 with the Penan people. Some of his sketches include cicada wing patterns, how to carry a gibbon with a stick, and how to drill holes on a blowpipe. These notebooks were later published by Christoph Merian Verlag press in Basel. Manser also created audio recordings of oral histories told by Penan elders and translated them. He claimed that the Penan people were never argumentative or violent during his time with them.
In 1988, Manser tried to reach the summit of Bukit Batu Lawi but was unsuccessful, finding himself hanging on a rope without anything to grab on for 24 hours. In 1989, he was bitten by a red tailed pit viper but was able to treat the snake bite himself. He also got a malaria infection while living in the jungles.
Unfortunately, deforestation of Sarawak's primaeval forests started during Manser's stay with the Penan. As a result, the Penan suffered from reduced vegetation, contaminated drinking water, fewer animals available for hunting, and the desecration of their heritage sites. Manser worked with Along Sega to teach the Penan how to organise road blockades against advancing loggers. Manser organised his first blockade in September 1985.
Activism Manser gave many lectures in Switzerland and abroad, making connections to people within the European Union and the United Nations. As an activist, he visited American and African jungles, staying in various locations for a few weeks.
He returned almost every year after leaving the Penan to follow up with the logging activities and to provide assistance to the tribe, often entering these areas illegally, crossing the border with Brunei and Kalimantan, Indonesia. He discovered that logging conglomerates such as Rimbunan Hijau, Samling, and the WTK Group continued their operations in Sarawak rainforests. As a result, Manser organised the Voices for the Borneo Rainforests World Tour after he left the Sarawak forests in 1990. Manser, Kelabit activist Anderson Mutang Urud, and two Penan tribe members travelled from Australia to North America, Europe, and Japan.Tsing, A.L(2003). In Nature In The Global South - Volume 7 of New perspectives in South Asian history. Orient Blackswan. p. 332, 334. . Google Book Search. Retrieved 31 August 2014.
On 17 July 1991, during the 17th G7 summit, Manser climbed unaided to the top of a 30-foot high lamp post outside of the summit's media centre in London. After reaching the top, he unrolled a banner that displayed a message about the plight of Sarawak rainforests. He chained himself to the lamp post for two and a half hours. His protest also coincided with protests by Earth First! and the London Rainforest Action Group. Police used a hoist to reach the top of the lamp post and cut his chains. Manser climbed down the lamp post without force at 1:40 PM. He was then taken to the Bow Street police station and held until the summit ended at 6:30 PM, when he was released without being charged with an offence.
Later in 1991, Manser set up Bruno Manser Fonds (BMF), a fund designed to help conserve the rainforests and the indigenous population in Sarawak. He ran the fund from his home at Heuberg 25, Basel, Switzerland.
In June 1992, Manser parachuted into a crowded stadium during the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In December 1992, he led a twenty-day hunger strike in front of the Marubeni Corporation headquarters in Tokyo. In 1993, he went on a sixty-day hunger strike at the Federal Palace of Switzerland ('"Bundeshaus") to press the Swiss Federal Assembly on enforcing a ban on tropical timber imports and mandatory declarations of timber products. The hunger strike was supported by 37 organisations and political parties. Manser only stopped the hunger strike after his mother requested that he do so. After Manser's disappearance, the Federal Assembly finally adopted the Declaration of Timber Products on 1 October 2010, with a transition period allowed until the end of 2011.
In 1995, Manser went to Congo rainforests to document the effects of wars and logging on Mbuti people. In 1996, on the German-language programme fünf vor zwölf (At the Eleventh Hour), Manser and his friend Jacques Christinet used auxiliary cable to drop themselves down 800 meters onto the Klein Matterhorn aerial cable car and hung sizable banners there. They reached the dangerous speed of 140 kilometres per hour while riding on a self-made rider with steel wheels and ball bearings.
In 1997, Manser and Christinet tried to enter Peninsular Malaysia from Singapore to fly a motorised hang-glider during the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur. However, he was recognised at the border and denied entry into Malaysia. They then decided to swim across the Straits of Johor into Malaysia, but later abandoned the plan as it involved a lengthy 25-kilometre swim and a passage through a swamp across the straits. They planned an alternative route, opting to row a boat from an Indonesian island into Sarawak. However, BMF received a warning from the Malaysian embassy warning of the consequences for such an act. In 1998, Manser and Christinet travelled to Brunei and swam across the 300-metre-wide Limbang river at night. Christinet was almost fatally injured by drifting logs along the river. They spent three weeks in Sarawak hiding from the police. During that period, they attempted to order four tons of 25-centimetre nails for the Penan to hammer into the tree trunks, which could have caused serious injuries to loggers when the embedded nails inevitably came into contact with chainsaws.
Impact In 1986, Manser's representative in Switzerland, Roger Graf, wrote about sixty letters to Western media outlets, but none took notice of them. It was only in March 1986 that Rolf Bökemeier, an editor for the GEO magazine based in Hamburg, Germany, who also specialised in indigenous people, wrote a letter of reply to Graf. In October 1986, GEO published a 24-page article entitled: "You have the world - leave us the wood!" which included photos taken during their undercover tours with Manser, as well as Manser's drawings. The article was later reprinted all over the world in Australia, Japan, and Canada, leading to the attention of human rights and environmental organisations and green parliamentarians around the world.
After hearing of Manser's actions, then-Congressman Al Gore condemned logging activities in Sarawak. Prince Charles also described the treatment for the Penan as "genocide." The BBC and the National Geographic Channel produced documentaries about the Penan, and Penan stories were also featured on ABC's Primetime Live. Universal Studios started to develop an action-adventure horror script where the Penan used their forest wisdom to save the world from catastrophe. The Penan also received coverage in Newsweek, Time, and The New Yorker. Warner Bros screenwriter David Franzoni also developed a script named My Friend Bruno after they signed a contract with Manser in January 1992. Manser received $20,000 a year until 1998 for the rights to film his life. However, due to its unsatisfying ending, the script was not taken up by the studio.
Response from Malaysian authorities Manser's actions drew anger from Malaysian authorities, who declared him persona non grata in the country. A reported bounty for his capture ranging from US$30,000Human Rights Watch, Natural Resources Defense Council (1992). In Defending the Earth: Abuses of Human Rights and the Environment. Human Rights Watch. p. 62. . Google Book Search. Retrieved 11 August 2014. to US$50,000 has been circulated by word-of-mouth, but the source of the bounty is unknown. By 1990, Malaysia declared Manser as the "number one enemy of the state" and sent special units to search for him. Using a forged passport and styling his hair differently, Manser returned to Switzerland in 1990 to inform the public about the situation in Sarawak through the Swiss media.
Response by Malaysian federal government