The very emotive subject of sexual abuse and the rape of young Penang girls by the staff and workers of timber companies in the Baram area has thankfully started to come to light now.

Regular and consistent reports on such abuses made to the police have been systematically ignored and suppressed. There seems little doubt that the timber companies themselves are acting together with the police to make sure that the reports are not followed up or acted upon in any proper manner.

The fact that such abuses have now been - and obviously grudgingly - acknowledged by a government report must point to the fact that such rapes and abuses have been going on for years without either the police or the timber companies themselves trying to stop this disgusting sexual abuse from taking place.

In addition, the sheer scale of the abuse must be much higher than that reported in the long- delayed government report.

It now seems very obvious that at least one of the timber companies involved is attempting to cleanse and 'greenwash' its image by taking over either the Semilajau (Bintulu) or Kubah (Kuching) national park so that they can 'pretend' as to being in some way philanthropic and giving benefits back to the community.

It is reported that an outline agreement has already been obtained from the chief minister of Sarawak and only the details now have to be sorted out.

A foreign national has been brought in to further this cynical and sleazy scheme. In order to try and 'cleanse' their name of the quite appalling list of abuses that they have consistently allowed to take place on their timber concessions, they now want to spend a few million ringgit to improve a national park for which they will effectively be 'given' a very long lease basis.

Surely the proper response to this crisis by any timber company would be to take out a full-page advertisements in all Asian newspapers through which they must apologise for their appalling crimes that have been inflicted on the indigenous peoples of Sarawak.

In addition, the timber companies should immediately set up a RM100 million fund dedicated to the rehabilitation and care of all those indigenous people whose lives have been devastated by sexual abuse and rape.

Nobody wants our national parks to be handed over to the private sector and certainly not to timber companies who have already raped the people of Sarawak both figuratively and literally.