Members of the Melanesian Indigenous Land Defence Alliance (MILDA) today issued a full statement and called for an immediate review of customary land administration in Melanesia to eliminate corrupt land dealings and fraudulent land practices.
“My land is the heart that pumps the blood through the veins of our communal lives…My land is a part of my clan, family, and myself. She is the mother of our sustenance and she is extremely sacred and special to us. She has always been silent but her eyes are wide awake”, Evereti Matakada (Fiji Landowner).
On behalf of the Melanesian Indigenous Land Defense Alliance (MILDA), we are writing to provide a different view on recent editorials promoting land registration for the Pacific. We wonder who authored this letter and in whose interest it was written? Because for Pacific peoples land isn't just about making money, land is about ensuring Pacific families continue to maintain a high level of self-reliance and to control their own destiny.
A Papua New Guinea (PNG) court revoked two 99-year land titles awarded to Kuala Lumpur Kepong (KLK) of Malaysia to develop palm oil plantations on 38,350 hectares of land in Collingwood Bay, Oro province, following complaints by customary landowners.
The PNG Government is cancelling all Special Agriculture and Business Leases (SABLs) obtained illegally, and will abolish provisions of the Land Act which allows for SABLs to be granted.
The World Bank is being accused of putting the interests of foreign investors before those of local landowners in the Pacific.
The Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG) is just one of hundreds of organisations around the world calling for an end to the Bank's Doing Business rankings system.
Financial records reveal that ANZ and Westpac have had financial relationships with companies found by a PNG commission of inquiry in 2013 to have abused a land leasing scheme.
One of these companies, Independent Timbers and Stevedoring, which controls 2 million hectares of PNG land via the leasing scheme, was in late 2010 issued a $240,000 bank guarantee by ANZ.
The PNG inquiry has accused ITS of engaging in “deceptive and clearly fraudulent” conduct to obtain large tracts of land from local communities and said the company should be probed for possible involvement in “international racketeering over land acquisition”. ITS has rejected the inquiry’s report.
Papua New Guinea is among the most culturally and biologically diverse nations on earth, and its laws enshrine the customary land ownership of indigenous tribes. Yet a massive land grab is under way with 12% of the country's land leased out to foreign corporations ...
A US think tank has criticised Papua New Guinea's prime minister for failing to act on the findings of his Commission of Inquiry into controversial land leases.
