Source: PNG Exposed blog

The Prime Minister has again announced the government is cancelling controversial SABL leases and returning the land to its customary owners.

“I am pleased to say that all the SABL leases to be cancelled, instruction has now gone to the Lands Dept and as of today (last Friday) I can assure you that leases are now being cancelled” – see story below.

Police stationed at logging camps in the Pomio district of East New Britain are continuing to intimidate and threaten landowners protesting against illegal SABL leases and wide spread logging.

Logging on New Hanover: "This is our customary land. Why would they do this to us?" 

New Ireland Provincial Government has sent in armed police to defend illegal logging and road clearing operations on New Hanover island. Local people have been engaged in a long struggle to defend their land and reclaim what is rightfully theirs from the foreign logging companies.

Paul Pavol, with MP Gary Juffa, at a protest outside the Rainforest Summit in Sydney

Mr. Paul Pavol, from the Pomio District of East New Britain, has been awarded the Alexander Soros Foundation Award for Environmental and Human Rights Activism at a ceremony in New York city.

Ninety-nine year SABL leases issued to logging and oil palm companies have been condemned as "oppressive" and unfair by the Supreme Court.

The comments came in a decision endorsing the findings of the National Court that the SABL lease over Portion 144C in the East Sepik Province was null and void and all logging and oil palm planting was illegal.

RH Consultant and ex Managing Director of the PNG Forest Authority, Kanawi Pouru, addresses villagers in the Pomio district

SABL Story Project*

PNG’s largest logging company and multi-sector business group is telling rural communities that human rights and sustainable business principles impede rural development and should be ignored if people want to get rich.

The oil palm mill at Dirina in Pomio

SABL Story Project*

Who would think that a responsible government, whose income is dependent on tax revenue would allow one of our major export crop to be smeared with more dirt? 

Court upholds SABL ruling

Source: Daphne Wani in The National (owned by logging company Rimbunan Hijau)

THE Supreme Court has upheld a lower court’s decision of 2014 despite a judicial review application by Sepik Oil Palm Plantation Ltd over a Special Agricultural and Business Lease (SABL).

The audio from this video clip is being aired as an advert on commercial radio throughout PNG for the month of September.

Source: Isaac Nicholas, Post Courier

LANDOWNERS in East New Britain Province have won a landmark legal battle to retake their “hijacked” land from the controversial Special Agriculture and Business Lease (SABL).

The people of Baining in Gazelle district had taken the State and developer to court over the SABL deal which has now been declared null and void by the National Court in Kokopo last Thursday.