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see Miksic, Old Jav. Gold
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Malaysia's Blue Lake, though poisoned, has gold deposits

   BAU, Malaysia (Reuter): It looks like a set for a World War II movie. In a lunar landscape lies a huge crater. The air is rent by explosions and the roar of tracked vehicles.
   Once the crater was a placid lake known as Tasik Biru (Blue Lake), steeped in mystery and teeming with life. The scarred surroundings were dense with tropical vegetation spreading to the nearby sleepy town of Bau.
   Now the area is an environmentalist's nightmare. The lake has been drained. The area is poisoned with cyanide. Dynamite and bulldozers gouge the earth.
   The reason? Gold.
   Defeated Japanese soldiers were reputed to have dumped bullion in the lake after World War II. But there has always been gold in Bau. It was first discovered by Hakka Chinese immigrants at the beginning of the 19th century.
   Officials in Malaysia's Sarawak state, on the island of Borneo, believe the state's biggest deposit of gold lies here. Production in the area has risen to 185 kg (408 pounds) in 1985 from under one kg (2.2 pounds) in 1982, mining officials said.
   The Sarawak government and miners have promised to refill the lake and restore the area after the gold has been 

By Leslie Lopez

exhausted.
   But Bau's 13,000 residents fear the damage may be irreparable. They say the cyanide used by the miners threatens their water source and the draining of the lake has deprived them of their sole tourist attraction.

Treasure chest
   "We fear that the cyanide can kill us if gets to our water," said a Bau resident who declined to be named.
   Opposition leaders say politically-powerful timber merchants had moved into gold mining in anticipation of a fall in timber profits. In Bau lies their new treasure chest.

   "What we have here is really the diversification of the rape of the state's riches by a few well-connected people," said Sim Kwang Yang, leader of the opposition Democratic Action Party in Sarawak.
   Bukit Young, the company awarded the five-year mining concession for Tasik Biru, is owned by Amar Ling Beng Siew, one of the state's richest timber tycoons.
   His company and 20 others belonging to Sarawak Chinese timber tycoons, control other mining concessions around Bau.
   Bukit Young officials declined to discuss the project. "We don't owe anyone any explanation," Roger Ling, a senior company official, said when contacted by telephone.
   Environmentalists say the damage caused by the mining is incalculable as no proper study was made before the prospectors began pumping out the lake's water three moths ago.
   "The government has to conduct an environmental impact study and make sure that the discharge does not contaminate the waterway," said Gurmit Singh, president of the Environmental Protection Society of Malaysia.

Abuses
   The crater stretching over 13 hectares (32 acres) has been boarded up and patroled by guards with shotguns.
   Environmentalists say the mine adds to a long list of alleged abuses of the environment in Sarawak which as been accused of causing ecological havoc by indiscriminately felling its tropical rainforest.
   Scores of Hakka Chines migrants first trekked through the rugged jungles of 

[[image]]
Curious residents of Bau peep through holes in a zinc fence surrounding Malaysia's Tasik Biru (Blue Lake) where a mining company has drained the lake and begun prospecting for gold with the aid of cyanide and dynamite.

Borneo to prospect for gold in Bau in the last century. They dug the crater which later, filled with water forming Tasik Biru.
   Many Chinese miners were killed in 1857 by the English adventurer James Brooke, Sarawak's White Rajah, when they refused to pay taxes, according to local historians. Brooke's family ruled the territory from 1941 to 1946.
   Brooke's North Borneo Company took over mining in Bau until 1921 when mining activity punctured an underground well which flooded the area where Tasik Biru stands today.
   "It used to be a pretty lake," said Chua Khun Ted, a cocoa farmer who has lived by Tasik Biru for 40 years. He says the lake has its own monster. "You should have come earlier," he said.

Jate Post Oct 4 1990



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[[left margin]] July [[strikethrough]] 2 [[/strikethrough]] 19, [[/left margin]] notes from phone conversation with Shawn Foley, Harvard consultant to Ministry of Finance

before 1989 there was a 'positive list of industries in which investment was allowed
in 1989 the system was changed; now use a negative list [[strikethrough]] in [[/strikethrough]] of industries in which investment is restricted in some way; list is much shorter
the turn of opinion in favor of deregulation happened about 1985-86

[[left margin]] neg [[/left margin]] list was drawn up in May 98 + revised [[strikethrough]] in [[/strikethrough]] June 3, 1991
called 'New Neg. List for Licensing' he feels village industries like blacksmithing will continue to be protected for sake of employment list he sent me casts doubt on this

importation of things like hand tools restricted to 6 State Trading Companies, own by the State + Dept of Trade