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.

Image: Foreign Minister Rimbink Pato, Prime Minister Peter O'Neill and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the APEC leaders summit in Port Moresby last year. PNG's PM has faced criticism for spending on the meeting. Photo: APEC Papua New Guinea Media team

Issues of corruption and land grabbing figure high in Human Rights Watch assessemnt of PNG

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.

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.

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.

ACT NOW! is calling on the Minister for Lands, Justin Tkatchenko to name the Special Agriculture Business Leases he claims have been cancelled. 

The Minister has stated on social media that of 53 Special Agriculture Business Leases reviewed, 34% have been cancelled via voluntary surrender, 2% cancelled via consent or court order and 12% have been referred for further verification. 

Foreign owned logging companies could be defrauding the country of hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenues and ACT NOW! is calling for a moratorium on any further logging licences until there is a full and transparent investigation and the cancellation of all illegal SABL leases.

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.

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].

Communities affected by three Special Agriculture Business Leases in the West Pomio District of East New Britain Province have assessed the economic damage caused by logging and oil palm planting at more than K2.4 billion.