Save Pos Lanai – Oppose Lanthanide Mining

Save Pos Lanai – Oppose Lanthanide Mining

Its Beginning!

The lives and livelihood of the Semai Orang Asli Community in Jelai Pahang are in danger.

With almost 2,500 indigenous people living there at one point, Pos Lanai is the dear home of a community of Semai Orang Asli families. Located in Kuala Lipis, Pahang, this ancestral land is steeped in history- The Semai Orang Asli have lived along this Central Forest Spine area connecting the Hulu Jelai forest area for hundreds of years. They have made the forest their home, and have served as guardians of the forest, mountains and rivers well before modern civilization realized the importance of the forest and its natural ecosystem to Climate Change.

Now, because of sheer corporate greed and government negligence, hundreds of Semai Orang Asli families face the threat of losing their home- and their lives.

After years of their fierce protests against encroachment, Pos Lanai is now being attacked on all sides.

Illegal logging activities threaten to destroy their ancestral land and kill one of Malaysia’s most important green lungs and ecological corridor.

Agricultural activities in Cameron highlands threaten to pollute their only water source and cut off their only channel to the outside world.

And their worst threat yet – A proposed mining project threatens to eliminate the ecosystem of a reserved forest area equivalent to 924 football fields worth of forest, force them out of their ancestral home with nowhere else to go, and poison their drinking source with lethal chemicals- along with entire districts in Pahang and Cameron Highlands.

All these consequences together create a compounded act of violence- One that tells the Orang Asli that their voices, history, and very lives mean nothing at all.