Mixed signals from the crown? Queen knights logging tycoon while Prince fights deforestation

mongabay.com | June 22, 2009

Tiong Hiew King, founder and chairman of the Rimbunan Hijau Group, a Malaysian logging firm notorious for large-scale destruction of rainforests, has been knighted by Queen Elizabeth, a move which environmentalists say directly conflicts with her son's campaign to save global rainforests. Prince Charles established the Prince’s Rainforests Project in 2007 and has become increasingly vocal in his calls to conserve forests.

The Bruno Manser Fund (BMF), a Swiss NGO that campaigns on behalf of forests and forest people of Sarawak, a state in Malaysian Borneo, immediately condemned Queen's decision to honor Tiong.

"Tiong is unfit for such a distinction, Queen should deprive him of his knighthood," the group said in a statement. "The Queen has awarded a knighthood to a Malaysian timber tycoon whose companies have been destroying the world's tropical rainforests for decades and have been heavily involved in illegal logging activities."

Tiong was knighted by the Queen in recognition of his "services to commerce, community and charitable organisations" (PDF) in Papua New Guinea (PNG). Environmentalists have fiercely criticized Rimbunan Hijau, the largest logging operator in PNG, for alleged human rights abuses, corruption and environmental damage.

"Ironically, the Queen has thus decorated one of the main responsibles for the illegal exploitation of Papua New Guinea's tropical forests," said BMF.

"To knight the PNG rainforest mafia is a calamity of the highest order," Glen Barry, founder and director of the forest advocacy group Ecological Internet, told mongabay.com via email. "These are rainforest-destroying criminals. Whose side is UK's monarchy on anyway besides there own?"

Rimbunan Hijau has operations in Cambodia, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, and Russia, among other countries. Tiong founded the firm in 1976 and today is one of Malaysia's richest men, with a net worth of more than a billion dollars according to Forbes.

UPDATES

22-June-2009 A reader points out that the Queen herself didn't make the decision to knight Tiong:

The Queen only nominally knights people in Commonwealth countries, just as she does not directly select Governor Generals as 'her representative' in those countries. The point here is that the PNG Government though the Prime Minister's Dept. made this decision that was endorsed by the PNG National Executive Council (effectively their cabinet), and there is no precedent for the queen to refuse this.

23-June-2009. BMF reports confusion of whether Tiong was actually knighted.

Rising doubts over timber tycoon's knighthood

Tiong Hiew King, founder and chairman of the notorious Malaysian Rimbunan Hijau Group, may not have been knighted as announced by his media group in Malaysia and Papua New Guinea

On 15 and 16 June 2009, a number of media in Malaysia and Papua New Guinea announced that Tiong Hiew King, the billionaire owner of the Rimbunan Hijau logging group, had been bestowed a knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II. for services to commerce, community and charitable organizations in Papua New Guinea.

The news was carried among others by the Malaysian daily Sin Chiew and the Papua New Guinean newspaper The National, which are both owned by Tiong. On the same day, the Media Chinese International group, which is controlled by the Tiong family, referred in a Hong Kong stock exchange announcement to "Sir Tiong Hiew King" as a member of its board of directors.

Research by the Bruno Manser Fund (BMF) is now raising doubts if Tiong has actually been bestowed a knighthood. Tiong's name does not appear on the official Queen's birthday honors list as published by the British dailies The Independent and The Guardian. BMF is currently awaiting a clarification regarding Tiong's knighthood from the Honours and Appointments Secretariat of the Cabinet Office.

The Bruno Manser Fund believes that, due to the devastating social and environmental effects of Rimbunan Hijau's logging activities around the world, Tiong is unfit for a knighthood.

Copyright mongabay 2009

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