SABL

NEW REPORT: Ten Years Without a Crop: The Wammy Rural Development Project

Forest Clearing Authorities are being unlawfully used to facilitate large-scale logging operations by foreign-owned logging companies according to a new report published today by ACT NOW!, in collaboration with Jubilee Australia Research Centre. 

The new report, which focuses on the Wammy logging operation in West Sepik Province, reveals how a Malaysian logging company has used a Forest Clearing Authority (FCA), intended to allow land clearing for agriculture or other land use projects, as a front to export hundreds of thousands of cubic metres of round logs. 

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Logging and land alienation deliver only negative development

A logging truck drives past an unfinished kit house on New Hanover. Photo: Jason Roberts

In 2015, anthropogist Jason Roberts spent months living with the people of New Hanover, documenting their lives and the impacts of large-scale logging and land alientation.

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The Plight Of PNG's Oil Palm Workers

Source: Sarawak Report - 8 September 2019

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Govt. must publish full SABL list

It is one of the world’s biggest illegal land grabs, yet more than 5-years after the government promised to cancel the SABL leases and return the land to its customary owners, the people of Papua New Guinea are still waiting to hear which, if any, leases have been cancelled.

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UN challenges govt over SABL land grab

The United Nations has accused the Papua New Guinea government of racial discrimination against its own people over its failure to stop foreign companies using SABL leases to illegally occupy customary land.

More than 50,000 square kilometres of indigenous land has been seized using the illegal agriculture leases, as exposed in a 2015 Commission of Inquiry.

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Civil society petitions China to stop illegal logging in PNG

As Papua New Guinea prepares to welcome Chinese President Xi Jinping, civil society, landowners and academics have written to the Chinese leader urging his help to reduce illegal logging in PNG.

China is the major importer of tropical logs from PNG most of which are sourced from illegal sources including from SABL lease areas.

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New report on human rights abuses caused by SABL land grab

The appalling human rights abuses being suffered by the victims of the huge SABL land-grab in Papua New Guinea are the focus of a new report published by ACT NOW! and UK based charity, War on Want.

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Landowners petition to stop logging in Turubu and Sausso LLGs

More than 230 leaders and other clan members from the Ibab, Tring Wau, Kamasau and Murai villages in the Turubu and Sausso LLG areas of East Sepik say they are opposing any further and logging activities in their forests. They are petitioning all appropriate authorities to completely stop what they say is continuous illegal logging activity on their land. 

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SABL Scandal Buried and Forgotten

 

The government has tried to bury and forget the SABL land grab scandal in which more than 5 million hectares of land has been stolen from rural communities.

It is using a well tested formula that we see employed almost every time a new corruption scandal is exposed:

  1.  First a long-drawn out official inquiry that is delayed by funding and other logistical problems.

  2.  Then a further delay before the inquiry findings are tabled in Parliament.

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Construction Work Halted on Site of Fraudulent SABLs

Fraudulent SABLs that the government has failed to cancel despite the recommendations of the Commission of Inquiry are still causing conflict and injustice - see stories below.

This is what the Commission of Inquiry said about the SABL over Portions 2465C and 2466C.  

“There was misrepresentation and fraud involved in the whole process” [Report p164]

Landowner signatures were forged in “a criminal act” [p150].

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