4 Borneo tribesmen held in logging fire

Four members of a Borneo tribe are accused of torching a logging camp in a region home to one of the world's oldest rain forests, officials said Friday.

The arrests illustrate frustrations among native communities in Malaysia's Sarawak state over what environmentalists describe as increasing threats posed by the timber and palm oil industries.

On Tuesday, police detained four Iban tribe members who are suspected of torching camps belonging to local timber firm Kotasar on April 12, said Nicholas Mujah, secretary general of the Sarawak Dayak Iban Association.

"They were believed to have been upset because the company entered the area and destroyed their fruit and rubber tree gardens," Mujah told The Associated Press.

Mujah said the firm had the Sarawak government's approval to operate on state-owned land in Silantek district. However, indigenous tribes have inhabited the area for many generations and consider it ancestral territory.

The men could be charged in court with arson as early as next week, said Mat Jusoh Muhamad, a district police chief.

No one was injured in the fire, which razed three mobile camps, because the suspects had ordered Kotasar's employees to leave the camps before torching them, Mat Jusoh said.

"This case reminds us that our rights have been deleted as far as the law is concerned," said Mujah, whose group lobbies on behalf of the Iban people. "Hundreds of loggers trespass on what should rightfully be native land in Sarawak."

Timber has been Sarawak's main economic engine since the early 1980s. The state exported about $1.8 billion worth of timber in 2005, according to government statistics.

Conservationists say that badly controlled logging and land clearing for palm oil estates is depriving indigenous people of land for farming and hunting, and that such developments have critically endangered several plant and animal species in Borneo.