Save Malaysia: Australia Trip

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We gathered how Australian Laws on regulating such industries differed from ours and based on one or more of these laws we can consider taking up a legal injunction there to stop Lynas from operating in Malaysia.

By Save Malaysia Stop Lynas

Or watch video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ksg24Fqq8s

The SAVE MALAYSIA STOP LYNAS MOVEMENT has, under the sponsorship of residents in Balok, Gebeng and Kuantan made a trip o Australia from the 3rd to 10th July 2011.

Since its inception in March this year, SMSL has made presentations to the Malaysian Parliament calling upon the government to scrap the project called LAMP (Lynas Advanced Materials Plant) Rare Earth processing plant. Till this day there hasn’t been any response from the authorities oncerned.

We then staged a 1000 mothers candle light vigil at the Teluk Cempedak beach on the Mother’s Day and followed up by a Solidarity Walk to the Australian High Commissioner’s Office in Kuala Lumpur n the 20th May 2011.

In response to the opposition to this plant by the local residents, the government set up an independent panel of experts called the IAEA Panel to look into the safety aspect of the plant. They were given a term of reference that merely concerned itself on whether there is any non-compliance of the regulations regarding radiation as laid down in the IAEA guidelines on such matter. The panel revealed its findings on the 30th June 2011 by declaring that they could not find any cases of non-compliance by Lynas Advanced Materials Plant. However they proposed 11 conditions to be fulfilled by both AELB, the regulating body ,and Lynas before the next stage license be granted to the plant.

We have, during the course of the submission period set by the government to the IAEA panel, declared that the terms of reference is too narrow and it did not address the various concerns of the residents living in the vicinity affected by the presence of this plant. We chose not to make any submissions and when the report by IAEA came out, it proved us right that the whole exercise was an eyewash.

Though we demonstrated peacefully during the first two days of submission by members of the public at the Hyatt Hotel Kuantan, there were hired thugs who came to harrass us. We have made a police report and a complaint to SUHAKAM regarding the violation of our rights to gather peacefully and to express our opinion, till this day there has not been any response to our police report and complaint to Suhakam on the day’s incident.

We subsequently held two large peaceful gatherings comprising of ordinary residents from these affected areas at the Taman Gelora on Father’s Day and a morning hike up Bukit Pelindung to register our protest against the LAMP project. To date, no positive response from the government has been forthcoming.

The IAEA Report mandated 11 recommendations to be fulfilled by parties concerned before the government grant the license for the next stage of development for the plant.

We found the report inadequate in many areas.

The plant is built on an ecologically sensitive area as it is sited on a large reclaimed swamp land. It is surrounded by swamps.

Nearby factories had tested and yielded results from geological studies that the water table is merely 1 metre below the surface.

With such delicate geological structure, the radioactive solid wastes of the plant which will amount to hundreds of thousands of tons which will be stored in ‘storage cells’ built on top of the reclaimed areas will in gradual setting lead to possible cracks on the 1 foot thick clay bottom and cause the plastic lining above it to give way. This will lead to seeping of radioactive elements in the solid wastes into the ground water which will end up in the ecosyatem and eventually in our food chain.

Once this happen, the traditional artisan fishermen who have been depending on the catch in the nearby sea will not be able to sell their catch as the fear of ending up eating radioactive fish becomes real to the propective buyers. This will effectively end their livelihood and it will be grossly unjustified for anyone to deprive these hard working kampung folks of the means to support their families. They have been living in these areas since time immemorial. They are the first inhabitants of this area.

The LAMP will treacherously destroy the rights of these artisan fishermen of the right to earn a living and this is a grave and serious violation of basic human rights and the Malaysian Constitution! The IAEA team conveniently ignored this possibility as it fell outside the scope of their reference!

The Report also recommended that the regulating authority , the AELB, be equipped with adequate resources to monitor and to regulate the activities of this plant 24/7.

We have withnessed how the head of AELB had declared that the radioactive waste produced by the plant is so low in radiation that one can ‘tabur’ (sprinkle’) it around! His credibility was further compromised when he declared that depositing the waste permenantly at the factory backyard was not acceptable. These statements contradicted each other and it demonstrated vividly the incompetency of the personnel involved in monitoring the plant’s activities.

Now that Lynas has mentioned the proposed installation of two units of radioactivity detectors, it made us wonder why these units were not included in the specifications laid out for the plant before it was built?

Can we honestly trust AELB to carry out its duties effectively when it is not bothered to check whether these two units of detectors are up to international specifications as they were bought by Lynas! It is equivalent to public road users themselves buying the speed detector for our JPJ to detect whether we have driven our cars exceeding certain limits!

Whatever extra measures put in place by Lynas will not change the lack of trust the public has of the competency of our regulating authorities as past incidences have shown that they are lacking in capability in instituting and implementing effective and competent measures to safeguard our environment.

The IAEA mentioned the permissible low level of radiation that will be absorbed by the public and the plant employees. It merely concerned itself with EXTERNAL RADIATION for which the irradiation of nearby people or object will obey the inverse square rule.

This means the further one is, the lesser will be the strength of the radiation absorbed. It did not address the problem of radioactive dust and liquids that will be produced during the processing of rare earth. It did not consider the dust particles and radioactive gases that could be inhaled and ingested into our bodies.

The INTERNAL EMITTERS that result from such inhalation or ingestion will pose many time more risks than that of external radiation. These internal emitters will irradiate our cellular particles inclusive of our DNA and cause permanent mutation which could lead to the gradual development of cancer in the body.

It takes only one mutated cell to cause cancer.

Obviously the ordinary citizens’ voices were not given the due respect and attention. We therefore turned our attention to exploring other options through which we could help bring the LAMP project to a solution acceptable to the residents of Balok, Gebeng and Kuantan.

It is under this scenario that we made the trip to Australia.

After an overnight flight, we landed at the Sydney airport on the 4th morning and headed for a pre-rally meeting at University Technology of Sydney.

We met with the organiser of the next day’s demonstration and attended a special meeting with members of Amnesty International. There we explained our situation to the crowd present and they responded positively towards our plan to demonstrate at the Lynas HQ the next day.

On the 5th morning, we gathered our gears and travelled by train to 56 Pitt Street where Lynas HQ is situated. We picketed from 1 pm to 2.30 pm. Australian media of all modes came to interview us and our activities were reported in various newspapers and radio talk shows in Sydney. Lynas CEO Mr. Nick Curtis invited us to his office to discuss the issue. We accepted and five of us representing SMSL attended the discussion.

We felt rather disappointed because he was merely repeating the points that were aired through one of the videos he did as a PR exercise in Youtube. He tried to justify Lynas’ presence here by basing his argument entirely on the IAEA report and he admitted that the company had not done enough to engage the local population. We told him that this engagement which he was attempting to do at that moment should have been done in Kuantan long before Lynas started its project!

When we found that the conversation led to no where, we stood up to depart but before we left, we handed him our memo and told him that our bottom line is we DO NOT want Lynas anywhere in Malaysia!

We met up with other NGOs that afternoon and we gathered enough info from them on where we should be heading now in our search to bring this issue to a close.

We went to the Australian Parliament on the following day and we had meetings with three of their Senators. We had had very fruitful discussions and we were promised that there will be follow-up actions on their part to bring forth the issue in their next sitting while coordinating with other relevant authorities in mapping out strategic engagements with parties that will help to further our cause. Though the weather was cold, the trip to the Australian Parliament was most rewarding even though we had to spend the entire day there.

The next day we met up with other NGOs in Canberra and they were all very supportive of our cause as they felt that a dirty toxic industry like rare earth processing should not have been exported to other countries as this will tarnish their national image. They promised to take up the issue and help spread the message around. It is also through one of these meetings that we gathered how Australian Laws on regulating such industries differed from ours and based on one or more of these
laws we can consider taking up a legal injunction there to stop Lynas from operating in Malaysia!

We are now preparing all things needed to pursue this course of action and we call upon all residents of Balok, Gebeng and Kuantan who still wish to see the ‘last, restful paradise’ in the East Coast of the Peninsula intact from the possible disastrous ravages of Rare Earth processing to come forward and help us defend our homeland. We in SMSL will lead the fight in preserving our beautiful homeland!

We later went on to Albury to attend a Student of Sustainability (SoS) workshops and spoke to a full quorum of students from various universities and individuals who came to participate in the workshops that dwelled on all issues concerning human rights and the destruction of environment. We spoke on the LAMP issue and received overwhelming response and support from the participants. The following day a support group was set up to further take up our campaign.

We came back to Sydney on an overnight train ride and were in time for the Bersih 2.0 gathering at the Sydney townhall. We took the opportunity to speak to the crowd about the purpose of our trip to Australia and they too gave us undivided support and they promised that the next trip we make shall see them lining up to help us drive the message home to Lynas that we don’t want the plant anywhere in Malaysia! They are true Malaysians!

1. That we found new options through which we can institute actions to stop Lynas in Australia.
2. That we have to develop a multi-prong approach to stop Lynas from operating here.
3. That Lynas was depending on fulfilling the conditions set in the IAEA Report to legitimize its application for the operating license.
4. That democractic governments differ greatly in their attitude towards legitimate grievances from their people and here we felt that our government is not helping and this has placed us in a helpless position. We shall besides trying to resolve this matter through legal means, we hope through mass public support, our plea will eventually be heard and we call upon all citizens of this country to come forward and help us in this issue.
5. That a shorter route to resolving this issue could be found in the votes in our hands.