They said it was an emotional day for them, to celebrate Mother’s Day in iconic Paga Hill  in Papua New Guinea’s capital of Port Moresby – a place they once called home.

Mothers who were unfortunate to have been part of the eviction of settlers from Paga Hill, capitalised on Mother’s Day to appeal for help.

It was also a symbolic gesture for them. On Mother’s Day six years ago they were evicted along with their families, and resettled to Six Mile and Gerehu. Since then, they say they have been living there under harsh conditions.

On Mother’s Day morning, they staged a peaceful march during the Walk for Life along Paga Hill road to make a statement.

Staging the march was about getting the recognition they deserved as citizens with equal rights as any other to basic services.

Weeks beforehand they had decided to reach out to the NCD Governor Powes Parkop for assistance.

Parkop had no idea that they had planned to meet him at the end of the Walk for Life event. There, they handed him a bilum containing a documentary that sums up what they have and continue to endure since they were resettled to Six Mile and Gerehu.

Gerehu group
Bessie Maiga and her family were part of the group who resettled in Gerehu. She says it has been hard on her and her family, especially when it came to finding water and employment. She said:

“Now Mothers Day na ol larim ol mama sidaun, nogat ba mipla karim container wara go kam lo rot olsem ol camel.”

(Because its Mother’s Day today we celebrate. Every other day we carry large containers of water up and down the road like camels).

Bessie’s husband now lives in the city with relatives in order to keep a job that would sustain his family.

Her story is one many of them share. Some families are not as fortunate as others to have a steady income.

“Sampla papa sa wok, sampla nogat. Lo Paga ino olsem, ol man blo mipla na pikinini man sa go dive na mipla sa salim,” Bessie said

(Some of our husbands have jobs, other don’t. It wasn’t the same at Paga Hill when our husbands and sons would go diving for fish and we would sell it for money).

Going back to Paga Hill rekindled fonder memories of a time when life was simpler for them.

“It was home for us, and it is unforgettable” said Bessie’s daughter Serah

Their Mother’s Day march was a desperate cry for help from the government. They say they seek only to be given the decency of basic human rights and services they deserve as people of this nation.

Meleasie Goviro is an EMTV News reporter. This is article is republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.

• More Paga Hill stories

In Papua New Guinea, community leader Joe Moses struggles to save the 3000 inhabitants of Port Moresby’s Paga Hill settlement before they are forcibly evicted from their homes in this documentary screened on Al Jazeera’s Witness programme.

Despite betrayals, police brutality and risks to his own life, Moses battles through the courts for three years, fighting the company which wants to develop the area into a luxury resort and cultural centre.

WATCH ON YOUTUBE: Al Jazeera’s Witness screening of the Paga Hill documentary

As the struggle unfolds, Moses recruits a coalition of allies, including politician Dame Carol Kidu, investigator Dr Kristian Lasslett and a motivated team of pro-bono lawyers to help him save his community.

“Some stories pick you. On my second day in Papua New Guinea, I found myself in the middle of a human rights abuse – standing between police holding machetes and machine guns, and the Paga Hill community, who were watching their homes being destroyed and fearing for their lives. The community were peaceful, but refused to be defeated,” recalls filmmaker Hollie Fifer.

“When I found out that a property developer was after the Paga Hill land in order to build a five-star hotel, marina wharf, and national cultural centre, I knew I had an obligation to capture the community’s resistance.

“The irony of violently evicting a Papua New Guinean community to replace their homes with a national cultural centre was startling.

“The fallacy of ‘development’ was clear. Over the last four years, I have been constantly watching the story of Paga Hill unfold and trying to capture it as it does.”

• The Opposition, the documentary by Hollie Fifer, which itself has been the target of censorship bids and a legal wrangle, can be viewed via Al Jazeera’s Witness programme page on YouTube.
• The trailer
• The ‘battle of Paga Hill’ – controversial PNG doco finally on NZ screens

It’s a true David vs Goliath story about the small community of Paga Hill’s battle against a construction project worth several billion dollars and succeeds in taking the increasingly sinister case all the way to the Supreme Court.

Then Opposition Leader Dame Carol Kidu is the first person to be arrested, but the rest of the 3000-strong community gather with a pro bono lawyer and an international anti-corruption expert to assemble the increasingly dirty puzzle of evidence into a complete picture.

They are led by fearless anti-corruption community campaigner Jose Moses whose life is threatened.

Many of the families in the family have lived there for four generations.

Life then imitates art as the filmmakers of the award-winning documentary The Opposition are challenged in court by Dame Carol Kidu, one of the subjects in the film and the Australian property developer, Paga Hill Development Company (PHDC), in question in an attempt to ban the film.

Selected to screen at DocEdge last year, young director Hollie Fifer’s film was pulled at the last minute due to the court challenge and was cleared for international release in July.

What began as a student film project finally had its Australian home premiere at the Human Rights Film Festival last month and has also now been screened at the DocEdge film festivals in Wellington and Auckland this month.

Earlier this year, Papua New Guinean cabinet minister Justin Tkatchenko called for a Commission of Inquiry into the “murky deals behind acquisition of Paga Hill land and the abuse suffered by its former residents”.

Legal consultant and researcher Dr Christian Lasslett, on the executive board of the International State Crime Initiative, called the evictions a “state crime” in a 2012 microsite, quoting a PNG Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report as describing the development company as a “private, foreign speculator with no ability to even pay the land rental, much less build anything on the site”.

The PHDC had been awarded a 99-year business lease over Paga Hill.

The Opposition won the Grand Prize at the International Pacific Documentary Film Festival, FIFO, in French Polynesia, in February.

Papua New Guinea is currently in the middle of an election campaign with voting between June 24 and July 8.

• Legal battles over, The Opposition finally gets home debut
• The Opposition
• The demolition of Paga Hill