Student protest over Taib Mahmud plaza in Adelaide Taib Mahmud in happier times with his late wife, Laila Chalecki Taib, during a visit to Adelaide. Picture: Brenton Edwards Source: TheAustralian STUDENTS at the University of Adelaide will agitate for the renaming of a plaza that honours one of Malaysia's most controversial politicians. Taib Mahmud, who studied at Adelaide under the postwar Colombo Plan, has been Chief Minister of Sarawak since 1981, a role that critics allege he uses to further family businesses and displace indigenous communities for illegal logging. "Taib Mahmud, Chief Minister of Sarawak Court" was so named in December 2008 after a multi-million-dollar bequest to the university. While low-level criticism has persisted for years, students - this time backed by the student representative council and outside groups - will protest tomorrow and ask vice-chancellor Warren Bebbington to rescind the decision. Protest organiser Lizzie Taylor said she hoped management would respond once they saw that students were passionate about the issue. "Regardless of how much money he's given, naming the court after him honours a man whose family companies are responsible for the displacement of the indigenous Penan people in Sarawak," she said. These companies are responsible for the deforestation of 85 per cent of Sarawak. We know what his name stands for and we don't want to be part of that in any way. A spokeswoman for Adelaide University said: "The university accepted gifts from Mr Taib in good faith many years ago. No gifts have been accepted from him for more than seven years. The scholarships and facility named following Mr Taib's gifts involve permanent trust obligations and agreements with which the university is bound to comply. Since earlier student protests at the university, an investigation into Mr Taib's family companies by Malaysia's Anti-Corruption Commission has begun, as has one by Swiss authorities. But Gregore Lopez, a visiting fellow at the Australian National University's department of political and social change, said Mr Taib was "untouchable." "He has not taken any of (the allegations) to court because it isn't a political liability for him," he said. Leaked documents suggest Mr Taib and his family amassed enormous amounts of land at low prices, while authorising the destruction of hundreds of thousands of hectares of rainforest. A video secretly recorded and released in March this year showed Mr Taib's lawyer detailing what mechanisms were used to move land and reduce tax. But Mr Taib has said no allegations could be proved and he was being framed by human rights organisations. He said even if family members controlled various companies in Sarawak, his relationship with them was not good. British investigative journalist Clare Rewcastle-Brown, who has spent years following Sarawak politics, said there was clear evidence Mr Mahmud privatised large chunks of state businesses into CMS Berhad, a company whose largest shareholders are "his dead wife and four children." "CMS Berhad and other family businesses including Naim Cendara, run by his cousin Hamed Sepawi, are benefiting from contracts for the construction of a mega-dam," she said. Adelaide is not alone in honouring hard men of southeast Asia. ANU conferred an honorary doctorate on Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew in 2007. Dr Lopez said that, despite student protests, it was inevitable that Australian universities would continue trying to build ties with leaders in Asia, no matter how dubious the activities in their home countries.