101 East looks at the future of North Korea.

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The Penan tribe of northern Borneo has spent hundreds of years living in the rainforest, hunting, fishing and using the trees for shelter and medicine.

But as logging by large corporations threaten the area with deforestation, the tribes’ way of life is being destroyed.

Al Jazeera’s Tony Birtley reports on the human cost of the rainforest’s destruction.

Nomads of the Dawn is a 1995 book by Wade Davis, Ian Mackenzie, Shane Kennedy on the Penan of Northern Borneo. A copy may be obtained from the Borneo Project. The Penan are caught in a Catch 22. The Malaysian government has refused to grant land rights to the Sarawak Penan until they agree to settle in sedentary colonies, renouncing a nomadic lifestyle. More on this from Asian Indigenous Peoples:

For two decades the Penan indigenous people of Sarawak in Borneo have been fighting a desperate battle to save their homelands from logging, damming and farming. They fight by blockading roads to the forest, with numerous members being arrested and even more forced to settle in marginal communities ravaged by poverty and disease.

Their nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle has been destroyed by the activities of the Malaysian government and big business. Only 300 Penan still live a traditional lifestyle on their dwindling homelands.

The Malaysian government justifies this by insisting that a traditional tribal lifestyle does not utilise the land productively, and have stated outright that the Penang can have no claim to land until they learn to settle on it in a colonial sedentary manner.

As usual, this ignores the farming techniques used by many such hunter-gatherers the world over, in which certain plants are managed in sustainable ways the colonists have so far failed to emulate. In the case of the Penan, this agriculture involves the management of plants like sago, which is an important staple food as well as providing building materials and resources used for traditional craftwork.

The Malaysian government also states that the Sarawak is being logged sustainably, even though it is recognised internationally that the forests are being destroyed at one of the fastest rates on the planet. This has also destroyed the traditional Penan economy, which is based on hunting the animals whose forest habitat is now being annihilated, and fishing in the rivers that are now being clogged with silt from clear felling.

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Egypt is hosting the 15th Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in Sharm el-Sheikh over the next few days. But how relevant is the group today? And with limited power, has it become an international speaking forum for developing nations?

The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) is made up of 118 developing countries. More from the Voice of America:

Non-Aligned Movement Leaders have wrapped up a summit in Egypt by outlining their visions for the future of the group. More than 50 heads of state outlined met for two days at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

The final session of the Non-Aligned Movement Summit was a day of summarizing and looking to the future by the dozens of world leaders gathered in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak noted the Non-Aligned Movement is” alive and well”.

He says the summit shows the movement’s importance as a conscience for humanity, embodying the goals of peace, justice, security and an honorable life. He says the summit discussed issues of peace and development and the yearning of our peoples for a better future in a more just and secure world, where poverty and racism are banished … He said we must now work hand in hand to achieve our goals, together.

Leaders representing each continent described their views of global challenges.

The King of Swaziland, Mswati III, spoke for Africa.

“Most of the challenges we face as nations [revolve] around the state of our economies,” King Mswati III said. “Clearly, we need to put more effort into boosting our economies, because when we grow the economy, we also address issues of poverty. The time has come for developing nations to adopt a common strategy, generate ideas, share experiences and speak with one voice, when we approach international finance institutions for funding our projects…”

Malaysian Prime Minister Mohamed Najib Bin Abdul Razak focused on the history of the Non-Aligned Movement.

“The genesis of the non-aligned movement can be traced back to Asia, the birthplace of the Bandung principles of 1955, which served as the eternal raison-d’etre foundation of our movement. Asian countries … which represent almost two-thirds of the global populace, having stood behind [the Non-Aligned Movement] since its inception …” Mr. Najib said.

Belarus Foreign Minister Sergei Martynov, the only European member of the Non-Aligned Movement, noted the world is no longer caught in the divisive logic of the Cold War, which brought about formation of the group.

“The countries of [the Non-Aligned Movement] are no longer caught between the two political and military fires … We and the world are way past simplistic division lines,” Martynov said. “Now, the very logic of history calls for [the Non-Aligned Movement] to step in and lead the way … We believe that one day, we will witness a transition from the Non-Aligned Movement to the non-aligned world … the world non-aligned with violence, intimidation, fear, bigotry, haughtiness, intolerance and hypocrisy.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki thanked leaders of the movement for expressing sympathy after Wednesday’s tragic plane crash near the Iranian city of Qazvin, and invited them to the next summit in 2012, to be held in Tehran.

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In the capital of Chechnya, the republic long ravaged by civil war and insurgency, an acclaimed Russian human rights activist was kidnapped and murdered.

On Thursday, mourners gathered to remember Natalya Estemirova. She had worked in Chechnya for a decade, focusing on killings and kidnappings she believed were carried out under the authority of Chechnya’s president, who is backed by the Kremlin.

Estemirova had been working with Human Rights Watch on a report. Rachel Denber, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central Asia division, joins Martin Savidge to discuss the killing and the state of human rights in Russia.

More from the Christian Science Monitor:

The murder of human rights activist Natalya Estemirova, kidnapped in Chechnya and shot execution-style in neighboring Ingushetia on Wednesday, has shocked the Kremlin and led President Dmitry Medvedev to pledge a full investigation.

But leaders of Memorial, the Russian human rights organization that Ms. Estemirova worked with, and other human rights experts here say her death can be added to a fast-growing price tag for a Faustian pact. They say that pro-Moscow strongman Ramzan Kadyrov “pacified” rebellious Chechnya, and in exchange, the Kremlin agreed to turn a blind eye to his methods.

“We know that Kadyrov controls Chechnya, and we know what [pro-Moscow] Chechen officials have said about Memorial, and Natalya, and her work. We have no illusions,” says Alexander Cherkasov, a member of Memorial’s board and longtime colleague of Estemirova’s.

The head of Memorial, Oleg Orlov, told journalists Thursday that Mr. Kadyrov had threatened Estemirova in private conversation and admitted to her that he did not regret killing “bad people.”

Mr. Cherkasov says Estemirova, one of a tiny handful of human rights workers to monitor the situation in Chechnya, was practically the sole surviving source of information on rights violations in the tiny war-torn republic, including the government’s alleged use of death squads, kidnapping, and the burning of the family homes of unrepentant separatist rebels.

“She documented all the things that stood in contradiction to the pleasant image of Chechnya created by the authorities,” he says.

Fourth prominent Kadyrov adversary to be killed

Estemirova, a single mother who lived in the Chechen capital of Grozny with her teenage daughter, was abducted outside her apartment building by armed men on Wednesday and bundled into a car. Her body was later found with gunshot wounds by a roadside in the neighboring republic of Ingushetia, which is also in the throes of a mounting insurgency by Islamist extremists.

Her murder is the latest in a growing toll of Kadyrov critics, including the late Anna Politkovskaya, an investigative journalist with the opposition weekly Novaya Gazeta and close friend of Estemirova, who was shot in her Moscow apartment elevator almost three years ago. Others killed in the past year include human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov, gunned down on a Moscow street last January; Umar Israilov, a former Kadyrov bodyguard turned whistle-blower, murdered in Vienna in January; and Sulim Yamadayev, a former Chechen commander and Kadyrov foe, murdered in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in March. Mr. Yamadayev’s brother, Ruslan, was assassinated in Moscow last September.

“One after another, people whom Kadyrov regards as adversaries keep getting murdered in contract killings that are often conducted in an open and arrogant manner,” says Masha Lipman, editor of the Pro et Contra journal published by the Carnegie Center in Moscow.

“This is the price Russia pays for entrusting Chechnya, and the task of maintaining order there, to Kadyrov,” she says. “Kadyrov is absolute master of his territory. He rules as he sees fit, without regard for the Russian Constitution or law.”

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Every Friday in the capital of Egypt, Cairo, there is a sprawling market where you can find just about anything — as long as you dont mind that it may have been used.

Jon Jensen of Worldfocus partner GlobalPost reports on what may be one of the world’s ultimate yard sale.

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The war against malaria — the parasitic illness transmitted by mosquitos that kills more than one million people each year — remains a huge global health problem. One of the biggest challenges in fighting malaria is drug resistance.

Michael Novacek, the provost of science at the American Museum of Natural History, joins Martin Savidge to discuss fears that deforestation and global warming are contributing to the spread of malaria, as well as what scientists are doing to fight the disease.

More from Public Radio International (audio report at link).

The global effort to combat Malaria faces possible major setback as doctors fight to eliminate a drug-resistant malaria parasite in Cambodia.

The global fight against Malaria has been dealt what could be a major setback. Malaria is caused by a parasite that’s spread by mosquitoes. The disease kills more than a million people each year. The World Health Organization says one of the most important anti-malaria drugs may be losing its effectiveness. There are signs that the malaria parasite is developing resistance to the drug.

This worrisome news comes from the Southeast Asian nation of Cambodia. Health officials there are now trying to contain the problem before it spreads. “The World’s” Mary Kay Magistad reports from Samlot on the Thai-Cambodian border.

Samlot sits in a remote part of Camodia that, for 30 years, was controlled by the Khmer Rouge. That’s the group that killed about a quarter of the Cambodian population during their four-year reign in the late 1970s.

The most common kind of malaria around here is also the most dangerous. It’s called falciparum. Within days, it can cause a fever, coma, and death. After Neang Van survived a bout of facliparum, the Khmer Rouge sent him to medical school in China for five years to learn how to treat the disease.

Now, Dr. Neang Van works at a tiny rural hospital in the same area where he once fought as a soldier. He says malaria is still a big problem, and it’s hard to get his patients to take their medicine as they should. “Sometimes, they don’t like the smell of the medicine or they don’t like the side effects. So they stop taking the medicine, and they end up with an even bigger problem.” Taking anti-malaria medicine haphazardly allows the malaria parasite to become resistant.

Dr. Mark Fukuda heads the Department of Immunology and Medicine at the US Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Science in Bangkok. He says the malaria parasites in northwestern Cambodia seem to be getting better and faster at figuring out how to resist each new anti-malaria drug that’s introduced.

“There are some theories that perhaps these parasites have become fixed in the population as a result of widespread exposure that occurred decades ago. And these are heartier parasites that have adapted to seeing drug being exposed to drug, and they become resistant more quickly.”

This time, the malaria parasite is becoming tolerant to one of the most affordable and, until now, effective anti-malaria drugs left. It’s called artemisinin.

Fukuda’s team and Cambodia’s National Malaria Center, have found that in some patients it’s taking longer for artemisinin to knock the malaria parasite out. And in a small number of patients, the parasite survives the drug and the same patient gets sick again days or weeks later.

The director of Cambodia’s National Malaria Center, Duong Socheat, says his center is working with international agencies on a project to fight this emerging resistant parasite. The idea of this containment project is to take pure artemesinin off the market for a couple of years so the parasites that have gotten used to it die off and new ones don’t develop the same tolerance.

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