booking entertainment: Sarawak: Australian University Embarrassed By Malaysian Timber Graft Probe

Thursday, 16 June 2011 22:36

Adelaide University accused of accepting illegal funds from Malaysian top politician - Bruno Manser Fund calls for an investigation

Malaysia?s announcement of a graft probe against Abdul Taib Mahmud ("Taib"), head of state of the resource-rich Malaysian state of Sarawak, has put the University of Adelaide, South Australia, into an uncomfortable position. The University maintains close ties with the controversial Malaysian politician and has accepted donations worth hundreds of thousands of dollars from him. In 2008, the University named a public plaza on its campus after Taib; in 1994, the University bestowed an honorary doctorate on him.

Taib demonstrators protest in front of Australian court.

Last week, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) officially confirmed that Taib was under investigation for corruption. The MACC's move follows an announcement by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, FINMA, that it was looking into suspected Taib assets in Swiss banks. FINMA had been alerted by Swiss President, Micheline Calmy-Rey, about possible Taib corruption links to Switzerland.

In March, Adelaide University's Vice-Chancellor-cum-President, James McWha, came under pressure when the Australian Greens organized a protest rally against the University?s ties with the Sarawak Chief Minister. McWha personally handles the relationship with Taib, one of the University's biggest benefactors, and has travelled to Sarawak with his wife at the invitation of the Malaysian politician. When questioned by ABC television?s "7:30 Report" programme, Adelaide University confirmed its ties with Taib but refused to disclose the amount of funding it had received.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission, ASIC, lists Abdul Taib Mahmud as a director of the South Australia-based Australian Universities International Alumni Convention Pty Ltd.

The Bruno Manser Fund is calling on the Australian authorities to probe Adelaide University?s ties with the Malaysian politician and to ascertain if Taib's donations to the University are in line with Australia's anti-money laundering and anti-corruption legislation.

Source: Bruno Manser Fund

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On This Day in Indigenous History

Friday, 11 June 1971
Native American Occupation of Alcatraz Ended

On This Day: In 1971 the Native American occupation of Alcatraz Island ended. Beginning on November 20, 1969, a group of Native Americans from many different tribes occupied the island, and proposed an education center, ecology center and cultural center. According to the occupants, the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868) between the U.S. and the Sioux included provisions to return all retired, abandoned or out-of-use federal land to the Native people from whom it was acquired. The Treaty of 1868 stated, however, that all abandoned or unused federal land adjacent to the Sioux Reservation could be reclaimed by descendants of the Sioux Nation. With the clarification, Indians of All Tribes abandoned the Sioux treaty as the basis of their occupation and claimed Alcatraz Island by "Right of Discovery". Begun by urban Indians in San Francisco, some of whom were descended from people who relocated there under the Federal Indian Reorganization Act of 1934), the occupation attracted other Native Americans from across the country, including American Indian Movement (AIM) activists from Minneapolis.

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