Transcript
ARCHBISHOP FRANCESCO PANFILO: It is church land, bought, and we have the document that it was bought in 1951, but apparently we cannot find the title [which is held by the PNG Lands Department] but you know there have also been some previous decisions from the Land Department which has declared that the church is the protector of this land. There are two or three areas but the biggest portion is about 17,000 hectares - a lot of land.
DON WISEMAN: This is land that the church was in the process of returning to local tribal groups.
FP: Yeah there are three tribes that claim to, somehow, be the original landowners. There are the Butams, the Baining and the Sulka. The Church can give it back, for a particular reason, for free, and we have come to the decision to return the land to the people.
DW: In the meantime what has happened is that a logging group has arrived and just unilaterally taken it all over and they are claiming, or their lawyers are claiming, that they have got legitimate title to it.
FP: Actually they have taken over about 8 hectares and it is a very strategic place because there is a wharf. So apparently this company has come in in order to set up a base and later on, of course, they will bring the logs there and there is the wharf. So obviously we had a hard time to get a restraining order, which we got a few days before Christmas.
DW: You have written to the Secretary of Land, Oswald Tolopa. Has he come back to you?
FP: (laughs) No of course not. No chance. And when the company got a restraining order, actually the case was in Port Moresby, in the courts in Moresby. We want the case to be back here in Kokopo, and to be transferred here. And the first hearing will be on the 9th February. I don't know - a kind of [push for] lifting the restraining order. So these people are back, as when they got the restraining order they stopped. But now that some one has come with a fake title for this portion, I don't know they lifted the restraining order. Anyway we are going to [challenge this], and we have grounds enough, I don't know. We are also trying to find out whether we can locate the title as such. But of course we have all the documentation that the Archdiocese bought that land.
