PHOTO: One of the SRC affected communities
Green Advocates International (GAI) Press Statement Residents of 22 indigenous Kpelle communities, dispossessed of their customary land, cultural sites, and livelihoods, have filed a groundbreaking legal action against the Salala Rubber Corporation (SRC) and the Liberian Government.
Their lawsuit seeks a declaration that they retain ownership of their traditional lands despite the government’s decision to grant a concession to rubber plantation companies in 1959. If successful, they could set a legal precedent by undermining a decades-old land law that erased indigenous people’s land rights countrywide without due process or compensation.
Over the decades, the Petitioners – residents of Gleagba, Bloomu, Dokai (old), Dokai (new), Bondolon, Massaquoi, Martin, Deedee-ta 2, Kuwah-ta, Jorkporlorsue, Gorbor, Kolledarpolon, Monkey-tail, Ansa-ta, Lango, Garjay, Dedee-ta 1, Kolongalai, Sayue-ta, Tartee-ta, Varmue, and Pennoh Villages – have been ejected from their ancestral farmlands due to successive waves of expansion by SRC’s rubber plantation.
A struggling mother
Local communities have lost their land, their crops and economic trees, their family graves and sacred sites, their access to adequate clean water, and the forest in which they collect natural resources for food, medicine, and building materials. Some communities – such as Jorkporlorsue – are reduced to small islands of habitation surrounded by a sea of commercial rubber, with no remaining farmland or bush from which to make a living.
The land The rubber farm
The Petition for Declaratory Judgment was filed on behalf of the communities by Green Advocates International, a renowned Liberian public interest law, environmental and human rights organization that has been working to support and advance the rights of the affected communities for more than 15 years now.
The lawsuit targets the Liberian Government, which granted the concession on the Petitioners’ land in 1959 without due process or notification to the people who had lived there for decades – and, in some cases, centuries. SRC, the Liberian subsidiary of Luxembourg-based agricultural giant Socfin, is also listed as a Defendant.