On 21 March, International Jungle Day, Franco-German ARTE TV has held the festival with a selection of films related to forests. Among them, Frères des arbres (Family of Trees), which bears the second title “The Cry of a Papu Leader”. Available on the Internet.

“At the beginning of the world there was nothing, just silence and night. One day, the birds started singing and the big trees fell on the earth. The next morning the people of my stretch woke up and have since lived in the middle of nature, among the trees. I am Globya Kepanga, head of the Papu tribe Huli and forest ambassador. I walk around the world spreading a message that concerns us all: the jungle is threatened and if the forest disappears the whole humanity will disappear.”

The Huli tribe lives in the tropical forest of the mountainous area of Papua New Guinea, in the upper part of greater Pacific Australia. It is one of the few primary forests that, together with those in the Congo and the Amazon, have arrived without transforming human beings. Many of the animals that live there cannot be found anywhere else in the world: the kangaroo of the trees, the Victoria Dove, the bird of Paradise that symbolizes the country... The largest of the birds, and the most dangerous to man if they get irritated, is the 1.80-meter-high Casuarius, which looks like an ostrich turkey. The Hulitas of Papua are the heirs of an old Casuarius, which is supposed to come from an egg of it.

Another protagonist of the documentary is French Marc Dozier, who debuted in Donostia. It has been collecting the Papuan jungle in images for 20 years. She will tell the viewer that the jungle in Papua, by itself, has a much richer biodiversity than the whole of Europe. 20,000 plant classes, 1,500 tree classes, 3,000 insect species, 750 more birds. The World Cup gives Marc some leaves: “It’s a magic plant to seduce women.”

The jungle is a real supermarket, it offers people everything they need to live: fruits, grains, leaves, fungi and plants that serve everything like eating, lianas to make laces… Also beautiful foods: worms that grow on corrupted logs, fat like the finger.

Globya has her own tree planted by her father where her mother planted it on dried leaves. The tree and Mudiya are brothers, and he hugs her excited: “I don’t know which of the two will die the first. But when I die, they will bury me at his feet. If then there is a jungle…”.

Because every day thousands of large trees are being demolished in Papua New Guinea. Every time they turn to speak, the World Cup shows the bare areas of the forests on the maps. Half of the region’s forests inhabited by the people of Huli will be destroyed in 2021.

Dozier has celebrated the World, especially in France; he has brought it to schools, he has brought it to parliament, the United Nations... With the book “The Journey of a Papuan in France”, it has benefited greatly from the experiences that the World created in the jungle has had in Western civilization.

Give Paradise to Thieves

Marc and the World Cup visit an area where jungles are crumbling. There, other magulladeros are working to cut down the forests, on a daily basis. Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia are hiring foreigners to survive in the modern world, leaving their ancestors without age trees. “Chainsaws cut trees as easily as adult bananas. Upon falling, the trees shout as farewell to the family and to the world.”

There are now 300 concessions in Papua New Guinea for the collapse of the area ' s forests. 15 million hectares exploited by large foreign companies. A third of the size of France has been entrusted to the chainsaw and bulldozer.

Deforested areas have already been visited in the documentary. And he found his neighbors, sad and angry. “They have brought us the jungle in return for nothing, they have left us nothing, neither the school, nor the health center, nor the infrastructure. Contracts have been signed by the most powerful in our country. The most serious thing is that, if you then resort to any complaint in the office of these companies… you find in it our police, which has the same skin as us, paid for by us, but defending the interests of foreigners”.

After the collapse, the gigantic trees are dragged into the sea in large trucks. From here to the boats. Papua New Guinea is the world’s largest exporter of timber. Every year 50 million cubic metres of logs travel to China, but among them they falsify papers to deceive international traffic controls; Malaysian intermediaries have organised a trick. In China they become tables, floors, papers, boxes, doors, chairs… and then sell them to the USA, other countries of America and Australia. Citizens are paid EUR 10 per cubic meter of merbau or wenge, which charge EUR 342 on the international market.

Companies are too strong for such vulnerable citizens. They have money to buy people, as you see in the crazy life of the new villages of workers that have been organized to forge. Political power says "amen" everywhere: Papua New Guinea’s legislation has been amended in 2007 to allow foreign companies access to the country’s forests.

The documentary Frères des arbres suggests that the governor of the province of Oro, Garry Jufa, is the only exception that persecutes those who shed trees in violation of the law. Although the demagogue authoritarian character shown in the images raises some suspicions to the viewer.

The other large areas of forests have been replaced by oil palm trees. The ancient ecosystems were destroyed, the vast fields of palm trees, in which the Papuan labourer gained a mediocre life lost by the jungle of his childhood. One to the World Cup: “But if we don’t leave real trees, there will be no more birds that have the same feathers you carry in your head.”

There are 900 species of butterflies in Papua New Guinea. “Ornithoptera Alexandrae” is the largest in the world, the female can be 27 centimeters wide. The export of butterflies is also a source of income for many citizens and is promoted by groups to support the conservation of the original forests as a stimulus eficaz.Pero butterflies, such as the customs of the people of Huli and all the accessories they need for their rites, depend on the conservation of the forest. The World Cup says to filmmaker Marc: “You white people are strange people, you take great care of your forests, but you do not have the same respect for the forests that we live far away from.”