Jakarta – ‘Greenpeace slammed Indonesia’s palm oil industry Monday for failing to live up to a pledge to halt deforestation, as the lucrative sector faces possible restrictions in Europe over environmental concerns.

Palm oil is used in everything from soap to frozen pizza, but a consumer backlash has forced dozens of the world’s largest food and drink manufacturers to address its ecological impact.

Vast swathes of rainforest are destroyed to make way for palm oil plantations, threatening endangered species and pushing indigenous people off their lands.

International corporations, including Unilever, Kellogg and Mondelez, have pledged to adopt environmentally friendly supply chains by 2020.

But Greenpeace said in a report published on Monday that large palm oil traders are failing on that commitment.

The environmental group found that most of the 11 major traders operating in Indonesia did not have strict systems to monitor the origin of their goods and were not calling out non-compliant producers.

“Broadly, the palm oil industry has agreed to end deforestation. The issue – and it is a critical one – is only two of the 11 (traders) we looked at was actually able to say when they are going to end deforestation,” Richard George, a UK-based forest campaigner at Greenpeace, told AFP.

None of the firms contacted by AFP replied to requests for comment on the report.

The Greenpeace report comes against the backdrop of mounting concerns about palm oil’s environmental impact.

The European Union, the world’s second largest consumer after India, passed a resolution in April calling for tougher environmental standards for palm oil linked to deforestation.

Indonesia and Malaysia – the world’s two largest producers – have been lobbying against the resolution.

Both countries have slammed possible EU import restrictions as unfair, and a move that would harm millions of mostly small-scale farmers.

A man with large round eyes bends to his instrument. The piece of sheet metal that substitutes for his missing arm draws the bow of his violin back and forth across the strings, emitting flashes of sunlight with each stroke. Thirty-six-year-old Sham Hang-fu’s eyes are riveted on the strings, where the fingers of his right hand dance and provide clear articulation of the notes.

The Hong Kong resident, who is busy rehearsing for two recitals he and his teacher will give in front of thousands of people at media events in the city, has overcome a huge physical disability to play with one hand. However, he is convinced that he would never have taken up the instrument if he had remained able-bodied.

“The amputation 14 years ago dumped my life into the bottom of a well. I’d had enough of constraints and wanted to take a breath of fresh air from the ‘outside’,” he said. The violin is a ladder by which he escapes his plight and pursues a higher dream.

Three years ago, Sham knew little about playing the violin, and there was no one to ask for help. He spent a year looking for a violin suitable for exclusively right-hand use and building a prosthetic arm to hold the bow.

Sham found a crude prosthetic limb at a public hospital, along with a prosthetic socket to attach it to the stump of his arm. He attached a steel rod to the other end of the prosthesis, so he would be able to “hold” a violin bow.

The joints of the makeshift prosthesis are not limber. Sometimes they stick, requiring more exertion to draw the bow. The socket doesn’t fit comfortably against Sham’s stump, either, which creates friction as he plays. That means the prosthesis needs to be re-dressed repeatedly.

The setbacks have never dimmed his determination to play the violin. When he plays on the street, people are drawn to him, and they don’t offer sympathy but admiration, he said.

Life-changing event

Sham will never forget the events of Sunday, March 9, 2003. It was supposed to be a day off from his job as a delivery man in Mong Kok. However, he was called into work to help load some packages onto a truck. When the truck was fully laden, he jumped aboard with the driver and they started making deliveries.

At one point, they stopped at the Sheung Shui Market for a couple of drinks, but when they were back on the road, Sham tensed up as they tore along far faster than the speed limit.

“Maybe the driver wanted to make up for the lost time at the market,” Sham said.

It was noon, and cars were snarled up at the Fairview Park section of the New Territories Circular Road. “We were in the fast lane, the left side of the road,” he added, recalling how the cars blocking the road ahead all had their hazard warning lights on. “The driver veered into the middle lane at high speed.”

The truck was closing fast on a car. The distance between the two vehicles evaporated in seconds, said Sham, who could foresee the outcome. He grabbed the empty seat between him and the driver, sank back into his seat and braced for the crash.

“I knew a crash was inevitable, but the way it happened was not how I expected,” he said. The driver swerved to avoid colliding with a car he was tailgating and crashed into a vehicle in the lane adjacent to the passenger side.

“I heard a bang, the wind on my face, glass fragments were flying toward me, into my mouth, nostrils and ears. Then I felt a deathly silence,” Sham said.

“I thought, ‘This is how it would feel if the end of the world came’.

“I couldn’t feel my hand. I kept yelling out. It was the only way I could think of to stop things from getting worse, though it really was no use at all.”

When he looked down, he saw the smashed bones of his left arm below the elbow.

“I didn’t mention the speeding to the police, though it might have helped me get more compensation,” he said. “The driver was about my age. My life was already ruined. I didn’t want him to become a victim, too.”

Desperate times

Sham’s left arm was amputated, and he spent the next two years in the hospital. For a long time he thought life would return to normal, but then he discovered he couldn’t tie his shoes, open a bottle of water or cut his fingernails. That’s when reality bit.

He was unemployed for seven years. He had no qualifications because his education ended at middle school level, and he couldn’t do manual work. “Seven years with no job left me devastated”, he said.

In the midst of his trials, Sham had a lucky break. In 2007, he met his future wife, Chen Wei-ling, and they married a year later. “To make me feel less bored, my wife supported me in engaging in any kinds of sports I wanted, such as table tennis and cycling. I really appreciated her unconditional companionship,” he said.

Even today, he is nervous when he rides in a car. “I refuse to sit in the front passenger seat. Fast driving still distresses me,” he said.

In 2009, Sham finally landed a job. He was recruited as an administrative assistant by the Hong Kong Physically Handicapped and Able-Bodied Association, which is funded by the Jockey Club.

With his newfound security, he began dreaming of a better life and decided he wanted to learn to play the violin－he viewed it as a form of “compensation” for his loss.

Painful progress

It wasn’t easy. Progress was painfully slow. Then he met Foley Lam Ho-yin via an introduction from the Hong Kong Amputees Association. Lam was an amateur violinist who had a vision that he could teach a one-handed person to play the instrument. Sham became his first pupil.

Lam had been through trials himself. In middle school, his violin training had been suspended for an entire semester after he sustained a wrist injury playing football. “I know how difficult it is to play the violin with only one hand. When Janice Chak Man-fung (chairwoman of the amputees’ association) told me about Sham, I was happy to help,” he said.

“Sham cannot draw a whole bow. It takes him longer to switch strings by drawing the bow back and forth, and the prosthetic limb was not designed specifically for him. That makes it hard to place the bow completely perpendicular to the strings to make a perfect sound.”

Sham is undeterred. Every day when his working day finishes at 6 pm, he and Lam study shortcuts to make playing easier.

Recently, they have been busy practicing songs such as Castle in the Sky, the theme to a movie made in 1986, and Below the Lion Rock, the title music to a TV series of the same name, which was often broadcast by the Hong Kong media during the SARS outbreak in 2003 and became something of an unofficial anthem for residents.

On Friday, Sam and Lam will perform the songs at the Ten Outstanding Young Persons Selection Ceremony, a flagship project founded by the Junior Chamber International Hong Kong in 1970 to recognise young people who excel in their professional endeavours and commitment to the community. Then, on Monday, they will play at the Konica Minolta Green Concert.

Lam acknowledged that Sham is a novice musician, but insisted that the recitals, and public acclaim, will signal the real start of his pupil’s love affair with the violin.

Sham is still trying to come to terms with his situation and is learning to be more philosophical.

“It may sound ridiculous but sometimes I see good changes because of the amputation. At least it stimulated me to cultivate this, my first real hobby,” he said.

A superhero with strings attached

When his daughter June was born in 2015, mastery of the violin took on a new importance to Sham Hang-fu.

“Before she was born, I wanted to become a hero in my own right. Now, I want to become a ‘superhero’ for her,” he said. “When I practice the violin at home, my daughter sits quietly and pays full attention to my playing. If her mother is not there, she asks her to join us,” he said.

Sham is learning to become a good father, trying to fulfil a promise he made to himself at the time June was born. However, his injury still haunts him.

Once, when he was walking in the park with his daughter, a boy approached and asked if Sham’s arm would grow back. When the 36-year-old replied that it wouldn’t, the boy turned to June and said, “Your father has one arm forever. He’s different from my father.”

Sham didn’t know what to say.

Another time, he was flustered when June wanted to give him a high five. He reached out with his right hand awkwardly. “How about the other one? Give me five!” she cried, patting Sham’s stump, leaving him nonplussed.

“It made me realise I hadn’t fully accepted the reality of my amputation, even after 14 years,” he said. “My little daughter taught me a very good lesson. To become her superhero, I have to accept my imperfection and try to find an appropriate way to tell her how I lost my arm.”

Sham said playing the violin does not make life easier for him, and he faces new challenges every day. The responsibility of having a daughter who needs his care never leaves him, but he wouldn’t change it for the world－and he will never stop trying to be her superhero.

YANGON – Pope Francis landed in Yangon on Monday, the start of a delicate visit for the leader of the Roman Catholic church to majority-Buddhist Myanmar, which the United States has accused of conducting “ethnic cleansing” against its Muslim Rohingya people.

The pope will also visit Bangladesh, where more than 620,000 Rohingya have fled to escape what Amnesty International has dubbed “crimes against humanity”.

The Myanmar army has denied the accusations of murder, rape, torture and forcible displacement.

After leaving Rome, the pope told reporters on his plane:”They say it’s too hot (in Myanmar). I’m sorry, but let’s hope it will at least be fruitful.” Ethnic minorities in traditional dress welcomed Francis at Yangon airport, and children presented him with flowers as he stepped off his plane.

He waved through an open window at dozens of children waving Vatican and Myanmar flags and T-shirts with the motto of the trip – “love and peace” – as he set off in a light blue Toyota car for St. Mary’s Cathedral in the heart of the city.

Only about 700,000 of Myanmar’s 51 million people are Roman Catholic. Thousands of them travelled by train and bus to Yangon, and they joined crowds at several roadside points along the way from the airport to catch a glimpse of the pope.

“We come here to see the Holy Father. It happens once in hundreds of years,” said Win Min Set, a community leader who brought a group of 1,800 Catholics from southern and western states of the country.

“He is very knowledgeable when it comes to political affairs. He will handle the issue smartly,” he said, referring to the sensitivity of the pope’s discussions about the Rohingya.

Large numbers of riot police were mobilised in the country’s main city but there were no signs of any protests.

The trip is so delicate that some papal advisers have warned him against even saying the word “Rohingya”, lest he set off a diplomatic incident that could turn the Buddhist-majority country’s military and government against minority Christians.

The Rohingya exodus from Rakhine state to Bangladesh’s southern tip began at the end of August, when Rohingya militants attacked security posts and the Myanmar army launched a counter-offensive.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson last week called the military operation “ethnic cleansing” and threatened targeted sanctions for “horrendous atrocities”.

Myanmar’s government has denied most of the accusations made against it, and the army says its own investigation found no evidence of wrongdoing by troops.

Myanmar does not recognise the Rohingya as citizens nor as members of a distinct ethnic group with their own identity, and it even rejects the term “Rohingya” and its use.

Many people in Myanmar instead refer to members of the Muslim minority in Rakhine state as illegal migrants from Bangladesh.

SOMEONE SHOULD HAVE TALKED HIM OUT OF IT 

Francis is expected to meet a group of Rohingya refugees in Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh, on the second leg of his trip.

The most tense moments of his Myanmar visit are likely to be private meetings with the army chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing and, separately, civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

More than 150,000 people have registered for a mass that Francis will say in Yangon on Wednesday, according to Catholic Myanmar Church spokesman Mariano Soe Naing.

Vatican sources say some in the Holy See believe the trip was decided too hastily after full diplomatic ties were established in May during a visit by Suu Kyi.

Suu Kyi’s reputation as a Nobel Peace Prize laureate has been tarnished because she has expressed doubts about the reports of rights abuses against the Rohingya and failed to condemn the military.

“I have great admiration for the pope and his abilities, but someone should have talked him out of making this trip,” said Father Thomas Reese, a prominent American author and analyst at Religion News Service.

The pope has already used the word Rohingya in two appeals from the Vatican this year.

Asked if he would say it in Myanmar, Vatican spokesman Greg Burke said Francis was taking the advice he had been given seriously, but added: “We will find out together during the trip … it is not a forbidden word”.

A hardline Buddhist monk group previously known as Ma Ba Tha said it welcomed the pope’s visit but warned, without elaborating, of “a response” if he spoke openly about the Rohingya.

“I hope he doesn’t touch on sensitive issues that Myanmar people couldn’t accept,” said Tawparka, a spokesman for the influential group, who goes by a single name. “There’s no problem if he talks about Islam, but it’s unacceptable if he speaks about Rohingya and extreme terrorists.”