This is the Proof of Customary Land Theft in Samoa

For the past decade, the Samoan government has been gradually undermining Samoans’ access to customary land.

In 2008, the Samoan government passed a law to establish a land registry, followed in 2013 by another law allowing mortgages on leases of customary land.

These radical changes were initiated by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), who in 1998 published a report insisting that Samoans should be borrowing more money from them in the form of mortgages.

They threatened to cut all loans to the Samoan financial sector unless the Samoan government privatized the publicly owned enterprises and allowed mortgages against customary land. If they took them up on the offer, ADB would loan them millions in USD.

The ADB had given the Samoan government an ultimatum. In 2000, PM Tuliaepa, alongside 3 others;

• Ms. Petana, Financial Secretary for the Treasury Department
• Mr. Scanlan, Governor of the Central Bank
• Mr. Chan Tung, Secretary of the Department of Trade, Commerce and Industry

gladly took them up on the offer to the tune of US$3.5 million upfront with US$4 million to come. Both parliament and the Samoan electorate were informed of these changes several years after they took place. This violated Article 109.1 of the Constitution:

Any of the provisions of this Constitution may be amended or repealed by Act, and new provisions may be inserted in this Constitution by Act, if a bill for any such purpose is supported at its third reading by the votes of not less than two-thirds of the total number of Members of Parliament (including vacancies) and if not fewer than ninety days elapse between the second and third readings of that bill:

Provided that no bill amending, repealing or adding to the provisions of Article 102 or the provisions of this proviso shall be submitted to the Head of State for assent until it has been submitted to a poll of the electors on the rolls for the territorial constituencies established under the provisions of Article 44 and unless it has been supported by two-thirds of the valid votes cast in such a poll.

ADB also provided half a million dollars worth of legal aid. This is a euphemism for what they really did, which was spend half a million USD rewriting the Samoan constitution so that foreign investors could extract wealth from Samoan communities and their land.

Lawyers were explicitly instructed to target customary land for commercial use, and create any legislation necessary to that end. This included allowing those without matai titles to lease customary land, despite knowing this law would be unpopular with the Samoan electorate.

ADB is reliant on investors. These investors want reassurance that their land ownership can be enforced over the Samoan people. ADB intended to create that reassurance.

ADB’s overarching plan is as follows:

• Create a land titles registry.

  This limits the scope of land entitlement from an entire village which is tended to collectively, to discrete properties which can be taxed, developed, and sold individually.

• Allow mortgages against customary land.

  This allows those dissected plots of customary land to be integrated into the financial market, allowing foreign investors to leverage these lands for economic gain while exposing Samoan communities to the risk of dispossession and homelessness due to default on loans or inability to repay mortgages imposed by external financial pressures.

• Establish ownership titles for customary land.

  This further limits the scope of land entitlement from all members of an ‘aiga, past, present, and future, to named individuals who can have their assets bought or seized.

This is not the first time something like this has happened. In fact, the system of land transfer the ADB seek to establish has a name: the Torrens system.

This particular system was developed in South Australia in 1858 by colonist Robert Torrens.

This system of land transfer wipes the slate of ownership clean by creating land titles which cannot, except under exceptional circumstances, be contested and which do not acknowledge any previous claims to the land.

It is intended to separate the land from its history, because that inconvenient history would show that the First Nations people have an extremely well-established century-spanning relationship to the land and the colonists do not.

The same alienating system was established in Aotearoa, Kenya, Canada, and Hong Kong, to name a few.

The imposition of the Torrens system in Samoa is significant and troubling.

This is the point in Samoan history that will determine whether or not our ‘aiga will be forced to work like slaves on their own land.

This is the point in Samoan history where we decide whether we want our land to be developed in service of future generations or plundered and stripped for parts by the same countries who tried and failed to fully colonize Samoa only a century ago.

Taofi mau i au measina: Hold fast to your treasures. Speak up and educate yourself. Tell all your Samoan ‘aiga what is happening. There are resources here to help you.

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor."

    Desmond Tutu