Photo shows an earlier (December 2016) protest by people in Pomata against logging

Malaysian logging giant Rimbunan Hijau (RH) is continuing it's efforts to log in the Pomata SABL area in the Pomio District. Local people say this is despite a court decision ordering all logging operations to stop pending the outcome of a court challenge to the logging permit. 

Rural Farmers Need Support - Not Foreign Owned Agri-businesses. Photo: Oxfam

Author: Eddie Tanago

Papua New Guinea's first ever National Agriculture Summit should be focused on helping Papua New Guinea’s 3 million rural farmers and not on assisting large foreign owned industries to grab more customary land.  

By D. Amari Jackson - Atlanta Black Star

Picture taken at Rali Camp, Pomata, Pomio District

Resource owners in the West Pomio SABL areas have not benefited from logging and oil palm planting on their stolen land as claimed by Rimbunan Hijau.

The resource owners say a statement by RH Group Executive Director Ivan Lu published on 14^th September 2017 is false and untrue.

With the country's outcry to claims of brutal Domestic Violence leading to the death of a prominent PNG Journalist, it is clear that PNG men and women by heart know that 'Our PNG Ways' is not one of domestice violence or any kind of violence for that matter. The 5th National Goal and Directive Principle in our Constitution promotes our 'PNG WAYS'. Stop the violence, that is not 'Our Model of Development'.

Source: The Guardian

Source: PNGBLOGS

Source: Centre For Environmental Law and Community Rights

The rural population of Papua New Guinea have long suffered at the hands of both foreign and national developers. This short documentary film captures the environmental injustice and human rights violation being experienced by the communities, living in the Special Agriculture Business Leases (SABL) project site of Pomio and Kairak in the East New Britain Province.

Papua New Guineans shouldn't be easily lured into slavery overseas, as Paul was in the article below. We should work our own land and reap the benefits, the true value of our land, instead of looking for fast/easy money.

“Our houses were torn down, and we were beaten and threatened to cooperate with the company’s demands. Our MP Beldan Namah initiated the project, and so was leading in all that.”

That’s from Jack Luke, an Incorporated Land Group (ILG) Chairman from the Bewani Oil Palm Plantation in the West Sepik (Sandaun) Province.

Anna Kwembi from Elis village of Bewani in the West Sepik Province is not fond of the experiences and changes the Malaysian logging company, operating under a Special Agriculture Business Lease, has brought to her area, and its impacts on her and her family. Like many others ActNow! has come across while investigating the Bewani area, Anna is struggling to keep the logging company out of her family’s land area, but she’s struggling alone.