The campaign to topple Sarawak Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud is building momentum ahead of the state elections, due by July, with two demonstrations planned in Britain and Canada on Feb 28.

The protests on the streets of London and Ottawa on Monday are being organised by Bruno Manser Fund (BMF), an indigenous peoples' advocacy group based in Switzerland.

The BMF is joined in this effort by other international environmental campaigners, including former British prime minister Gordon Brown's sister-in-law, Clare Rewcastle Brown.

NONE Rewcastle Brown ( standing in photo ) is the founder of the critical website Sarawak Report, which has been exposing Taib's alleged corruption and global business empire.

According to a BMF statement, the protests outside two property companies, in downtown Ottawa and in central London that are controlled by the Taib family, will be led by indigenous community leaders from Malaysia.

The two companies, the Canadian Sakto Corporation and the British Ridgeford Properties Ltd, are both named in a blacklist of 49 Taib-linked companies , some only recently known, that was released earlier this week by the Swiss-based NGO, the statement said.

The past rises with  a vengeance

The protest in Ottawa, slated for 12pm (Eastern Time, GMT -5), will be led by Mutang Urud, an indigenous leader from Sarawak who has lived in exile in Canada since the early 1990s.

Mutang was arrested and placed in solitary confinement by the Taib government in February 1992 for running the Sarawak Indigenous Peoples' Association (SIPA).

He spoke before the 47th UN General Assembly in New York on Dec 10, 1992, on the plight of Sarawak's indigenous peoples.

The protest in London, scheduled for 9.30am GMT will be led by Rewcastle Brown and Peter John Jaban.

Peter, a Sarawak native, is the DJ of Radio Free Sarawak , an independent short-wave radio station broadcasting from London. It focuses on Sarawak activists and communities defending their land rights and opposing abuses by Taib.

Both Peter and Rewcastle Brown, who had been operating on the website and radio behind the scenes, decided to go public this week, fearing for their personal safety after the Sarawak Report received death threats. A former employee of Taib, who turned whistleblower, was found dead last October.

The Sarawak state polls is speculated to be held in April.