PNG’s largest logging company and multi-sector business group is telling rural communities that human rights and sustainable business principles impede rural development and should be ignored if people want to get rich.
This is the message Rimbunan Hijau and its consultant Kanawi Pouru, have been delivering to people in the Pomio District of East New Britain Province who are questioning the company’s logging and oil palm operations. Kanawi Pouru is the Former Managing Director of the PNG Forestry Authority.
Speaking to local people at the Talo Club in Malakur Village last month, Kanawi told them the United Nation’s Declaration on Human Rights and the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) Principles and Criteria are anti-development mechanisms setup by rich and wealthy Europeans to suppress people in rural communities in Papua New Guinea who want to change their life style and alleviate poverty through commercial exploitation of their vast natural resources.
Kanawi and Mok, a representative of RH subsidiary Gilford Ltd, bluntly told people at Malakur Village that unless they allowed their land to be converted into oil palm plantations they will remain in poverty. Kanawi also accused NGOs of misleading “ignorant rural communities” and suppressing their rights to advance economically.
It is Mr Tiong of Rimbunan Hijau who is fantastically rich, not his ‘wealthy European’ critics.
All the native people who have handed over their valuable timber rights to Mr Tiong (willingly or unwillingly) have ended up even poorer than they were before.
Mr Tiong pays good money to the likes of Kanawi Pouru (Former Managing Director of the PNG Forestry Authority) to gain his influence, but only peanuts to vulnerable landowners.
For them it is not development but disinheritance and disaster.
Tiong accuses those ‘Westerners’ eg NGOs, who criticise his activities, for being ‘rich’, when in fact they are merely EDUCATED – so they know a Tiong when they see a Tiong.
They understand that not only is this jungle leech sucking the life from the local people, but he is also sucking the life from the human habitat and destroying great sections of our planet.
The ICC have in past days indicated they are going to put major land-grab criminals into their sights. So, if Tiong pursues this devious destruction in Papua it should put Malaysia’s mega-land-grab criminal at the top of the list for prosecution.
Why he should think he needs even further riches, at the expense of the beauty of our planet and the welfare of our weakest fellow human beings, is a conversation to be had between himself and his psychiatrist, but does it not mitigate his sins (aka crimes).
Jesus Christ, whom Tiong professes to be faithful to, had many warnings for hypocrites like him. He will be last. The people from Papua come first… and may purgatory take some time.