The Ramu River lowland rainforest area being logged in Papua New Guinea. Photo: Wikipedia

Pacific Scoop:
Backgrounder – By Rainforest Portal in  Madang

A lawsuit initiated by a local landowner in Papua New Guinea has shut down logging in the vast Ramu River rainforest area since last November.

The PNG Forest Authority’s review of the granting of the right to log to the Malaysian-owned Rimbunan Hijau company in Ramu River valley is expected soon.

Industry and government officials are accused of seeking to grant the  permit to the controversial company.

This youth was tortured after a minor crime of breaking into one of logger Rimbanan Hijau's toolsheds. He and another youth were pulled by bribed police from their homes and shot at point blank range in the leg with an M16 rifle. They were left to bleed. Photo: Peter Las/Rainforest Portal

Massive cash payments and brutal violence – to intimidate communities resisting logging – is rife, claim rainforest campaigners. Yet local protests against logging continues to intensify in Madang, as calls grow to end all industrial primary rainforest logging in PNG.

The mighty Ramu River valley in PNG’s Madang Province flows for some 720 km through more than  a million hectares of sparsely populated primary lowland rainforest and swamp forest.

The Ramu contains a wide variety of tropical Australasian marsupials, including tree kangaroos, and 13 mammal species that are endemic or near endemic.

Local tribes are mostly people with little, if any, formal education. As they become more aware of the outside world, they seek to meet their basic needs for education, medicines, transportation and improved living standards.

Logging started
Industrial logging of their rainforests is often seen as the onlyway to advance themselves.

Several logging concessions covering hundreds of thousands of hectares have already been laid out and logging has been reportedly started by Rimbunan Hijau in Ramu Block 1.

Tiong Hiew King is chairman of Rimbunan Hijau, and after years of his company denuding much of the Asia-Pacific region’s rainforests, is reportedly the richest man in Asia.

Rainforest campaigners claim Rimbunan Hijau’s intent, as demonstrated by the massive logging infrastructure already built, is clearly to industrially log the entire area.

The primary tributary is the Sogeram River, which is crossed to reach the Ramu. This area has already been partially logged by another now defunct Malaysian logging company. Rimbunan Hijau seeks to acquire the remaining forests there as well.

A local group, Asples Madang – a project of Ecological Internet -  is the only organisation working with all Ramu and Sogeram landowners to end logging.

Some landowners seek to end the logging to pursue alternatives, others prefer existing provincial logging companies that operate somewhat more responsibly and with a much lower impact. Yet all are united by concerns over RH’s methods.

Many landowners want Rinbunan Hijau out now.

Fragile alliance
This fragile alliance has stopped logging since November 2009. The halt was due to a Sogeram landowner’s court case that demonstrated the Forest Management Area (FMA) was illegally granted.

A Ramu logging site. Photo: Rainforest Portal

This is only a temporarily reprieve, however, as logging companies have been accused of taking “bags of money” into the bush to bribe ill-informed and poverty-stricken landowners.

This renewed competition for logging rights offers a unique opportunity for forest protectors to unite to expel Rimbunan Hijau, and work to end or carefully limit and control logging.

In late 2009, drunken youths broke into a Rimbunan Hijau tool shed.

Local police were allegedly bribed to send a message to the community to end their resistance.

Shot in leg
The next day two youths were rounded up separately by visibly drunken police and unknown associates, and shot with a military-style M16 rifle at point blank range in the leg.

After the shooting, neither was arrested but were just left to bleed.

Both were hospitalised with a shattered leg, with the youth in the photo having just now after two months of treatment been discharged from hospital.

Asples Madang’s director, Peter Las from the Sogeram, has been helping these youths, documenting their story, bringing them food and seeking to have criminal charges brought.

But Asples Madang is critically short of funding to do so.

Rainforest Portal is a project of Ecological Internet.