Company digging up ancestral graves

Patrick Matbob





Moves by China’s Ramu Nickel Company to excavate and relocate a cemetery at the Basamuk Refinery site in PNG’s Madang province is being firmly opposed by a local clan.
A leader of the clan that owns the cemetery has called on the Madang Provincial government to stop the company from digging up their ancestral grave site. 
The company is excavating the cemetery to build facilities for the refinery.
Sama Mellombo of the Mebu clan who are landowners at Basamuk said they do not have any agreement with the company for the graves to be dug up and relocated.
He said the cemetery was their clan’s proof of ownership of the land and neither the developers MCC nor the PNG government had formally acquired the land from them.
Mellombo said last month the company had dug up the cemetery and this had angered and upset his people. He said the company officials then visited them the next day with gifts of balloons, biscuits, cheese pops and candles to try and appease the people.
He said the company officials wanted the people to accept the gifts and photographs would be taken to show there was goodwill between MCC and the local people.
 However, he said the people rejected the gifts and felt insulted by the treatment given to them by the company. He said they were not children to be given balloons and snacks over such a serious issue.
He described the company’s slogan that says ‘One Ramu Nico, One Community’ as false because his clan was never consulted about the plans to dig up and relocate their cemetery.
Last month’s incident followed an earlier complaint by the people after the first part of the cemetery had been dug up.
Madang Governor Sir Arnold Amet had spoken to MCC’s Community Affairs General Manager Martin Paining to advise MCC President Madam Luo Shu for the company to stop digging up the graves until an agreement is reached with the people.
Governor Amet said Mellombo and his Mebu clan were deeply troubled by MCC proceeding to dig up and remove bones, including decomposing bodies from the cemetery without full consultation and agreement with all affected clans.
“It would be most insensitive to proceed with this action by ignoring the people’s concerns”, Governor Amet said. However, a month after the governor had raised his concerns, the company resumed digging up the graves.
A company official said the cemetery was dug up with the approval of the people after compensation was paid. The official said the remains of the dead had been relocated to a new site.
However, Mellombo said another clan called Mindire, had been compensated by the company, but who were not owners of the cemetery.
Mellombo, who had worked for Bougainville Copper before the crisis, said the excavation of the cemetery went against a mining warden’s direction issued last September.
Mining warden Vele Gavu had advised that a previous determination of August 14, 2009 he had made regarding the relocation of Basamuk cemetery was null and void.
Gavu advised parties involved that the determination was not binding because he found out that certain considerations in the determination had been overlooked.
Mellombo said his clan had settled at Basamuk in 1946 after the war and the cemetery had been used for the last 63 years.

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