BY BOB AIKEN
SYDNEY, Australia-Large rallies and marches took place throughout Papua New Guinea in July in defense of traditional land rights that the vast majority of people there still claim. Very little land in Papua New Guinea is owned as private property, with about 97 percent still held as "custom land" by family and clan groups.
These protests have become intertwined with resistance to the austerity drive being demanded of Papua New Guinea's neocolonial government by its international capitalist creditors.
Pollution from a giant gold and copper mine at Ok Tedi in the highlands of western Papua New Guinea has devastated the traditional gardening, hunting, and fishing grounds of the surrounding communities and along the 700-mile Fly River.
Owned by BHP, Australia's largest corporation, the mine dumped some 80,000 metric tons of mining waste into the river system each day.
In May 1994, representatives of these communities filed a lawsuit against BHP in Australia for $A4 billion ($Al = $US.75) in compensation. The Supreme Court in the Australian state of Victoria has not yet ruled on whether it has jurisdiction in the case.
Recently, BHP moved to use Canberra's domination of Papua New Guinea, its former colony, to deal a blow to this and all other claims by "customary" landholders for compensation against major capitalist developments there.
A unilateral compensation agreement signed by Ok Tedi Mining and the Papua New Guinea government August 4 provides for 14 million kina (K1 = $US.75) compensation to the landholders up to the end of 1994, and a package estimated at K110 million in additional benefits over the remaining 15-year life of the mine.
Australian corporations call the shots
The agreement is part of a bill, that BHP's lawyers
drafted, due to be ratified by the Papua New Guinea
Parliament in September. The bill aims to make it a
criminal offense to seek compensation outside strict
guidelines set by the government, or assist with any
legal action outside these guidelines. Constitutional
challenges to the new law are also prohibited in the
draft bill.
Slater and Gordon, the Melbourne-based law firm handling the Ok Tedi landholders' case in Australia claims the firm could face criminal charges in PNG under this law. Fines for initiating court action are to be set at up to K100,000, plus up to K10,000 per day that the offense continues.
"It almost defies belief that an Australian company could seek to deprive the liberties of the people of another country," a spokesperson for Slater and Gordon said in a statement August 10.
Since granting independence in 1975, Canberra has led in imposing harsher conditions on the ongoing financial bailouts of the Papua New Guinea government in recent years.
Currently it is providing $US68 million of a $US300 million World Bank "rescue package" for Port Moresby in addition to its regular annual grant of around $A300 million.
The Australian rulers' goal is stable conditions for the exploitation of Papua New Guinea's natural resources - which include gold, copper, oil, natural gas, and timber - in which Australian companies still have by far the largest stake.
Landholders fight for compensation
Australian mining corporation CRA was forced to close
its Panguna copper mine on the island of Bougainville
in 1989 following armed actions by landholders
demanding compensation for environmental devastation.
The brutal response of the Papua New Guinea army to
this rebellion sparked a movement in Bougainville for
secession from Papua New Guinea. Despite the backing of
Canberra, Port Moresby has not been able to bring the
situation under control and the mine remains closed.
Later, CRA also shelved its Mount Kare gold mine in the Papua New Guinea highlands in the face of hostility from landholders in the area.
The Papua New Guinea government is wracked by financial crisis. Currently the World Bank is making its loan package to Papua New Guinea conditional on Port Moresby carrying out the sharpest austerity drive in the country's history, called the Structural Adjustment Program.
The plan includes introducing a consumption tax, lowering trade and investment barriers, and slashing government expenditure, with the budget in April projecting cuts of 4,500 public-sector jobs. The kina was devalued by 12 percent at the end of 1994 as part of a package that included a wage freeze for government employees and a freeze on new expenditures.
Papua New Guinea's prime minister, Sir Julius Chan, told critics of the Structural Adjustment Program that "beggars can't be choosers." The measures have sparked significant opposition. At the end of March, the country's 18,000 teachers staged an eight-day strike over wages. More recently, the PNG Trade Union Congress announced plans to call stopwork meetings over the planned cuts in public-sector jobs.
And in mid-July explosive student-led marches and rallies took place in Port Moresby and a number of other towns against plans to register title to ownership of all "custom land."
On July 18 about 4,000 students and others took part in a public forum at the Waigani campus of the University of Papua New Guinea in Port Moresby to protest against the government's policies on land registration and "economic reform." They then marched to the Parliament building where a delegation of 55 met with government ministers. Seventy placard-bearing soldiers from the Murray Barracks, who were protesting against their reduced food ration, also joined the forum and march.
Two people were shot dead as police tried to break up protests in Goroka, July 21, at a rally of some 10,000 people. Other land protests have taken place recently in Kundiawa, Mt. Hagen, and at Lae.
Matthew Parep, president of the National Union of Students, vowed that because there is "no opposition" in Parliament, the students will step up the fight for the "silent majority."
In face of the protests, the government was forced to back down from beginning the land registration program. Some 85 percent of Papua New Guinea's 4 million people live on "custom land." Most of the 5 percent who live in towns, and the 10 percent who live in shanty towns have retained their rights to traditional land use.
The customary land tenure system has long been seen by capitalist interests as one of the main barriers to stable and profitable investment in Papua New Guinea. But most traditional landholders see registration of title to all custom land, and the complex and ultimately arbitrary process of deciding who the "owner" of a piece of custom land is, as a major step in making land a marketable commodity, and thus an alienable right.
Ludger Mond, executive secretary in Papua New Guinea of the Catholic Commission for Justice Peace and Development, wrote in the March edition of Pacific News Bulletin that, "Today, a Melanesian can simply quit a formal employment whenever s/he wishes, or when employment conditions and wages are not agreeable, and go home to the village. There is land and s/he can survive without money as do the other 85 per cent of the population.
Custom land is the only form of social security in the country, where 60,000 who leave school are competing for 5-6000 new jobs each year. There are virtually no immigrants allowed into Australia from Papua New Guinea.
Underscoring the social upheaval unfolding in Papua New Guinea today, and the problems big capitalist investors are having in dealing with customary landholders, the August 7 Papua New Guinea Post-Courier reported on a riot at the country's newest gold mine at Tolukuma in the Central Province.
Construction at the mine was halted after the water supply had been cut off by landholders, the Post- Courier reported. A public meeting between the Australian developers, Dome Resources, and the landholders erupted into fighting with a company boss and the local Member of Parliament assaulted, and extensive damage of mine property. Police and company security guards were sent in to guard company property and restore the water supply.