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Nuclear waste not welcome in the Wendland, Germany

alien8 | 14.11.2001 06:56

Thousands of farmers, local residents, environmental activists etc. blockaded roads and railtracks in the Wendland region, Northern Germany, as another shipment of nuclear waste was transported from La Hague to the repository at Gorleben.

Nuclear waste not welcome in the Wendland, Germany
Nuclear waste not welcome in the Wendland, Germany


Thousands of farmers, local residents, environmental activists etc. blockaded roads and railtracks in the Wendland region, Northern Germany, as another shipment of nuclear waste was transported from La Hague to the repository at Gorleben. Police carried out violent attacks on protesters to force the transport through against heavy resistance. The trucks carrying the 'Castor' containers ('cask for storage and transportation of radioactive waste') finally arrived in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

For several days, the whole region saw a multitude of actions, including tractor blockades on railtracks and roads leading to the deposit, sit-down protests, vigils, spontaneous demonstrations, tree climbing actions etc.. On Sunday and Monday particularly, protesters were successfully playing cat-and-mouse with the police - as one blockade was evicted, several others were set up elsewhere.

The actions against the shipment had started on Saturday, 10 November, with a demonstration in the town of Lueneburg. 10,000 local residents, farmers, members of campaign groups etc. demonstrated against the imminent transport and for the immediate closure of all nuclear power plants. They made clear that their objective was not just to keep the Wendland free of nuclear waste, but to end all use of nuclear energy immediately and to oppose a state, which enforces its continued use by violent means.

However protests were not confined to the Wendland region, with its specific history of resistance against both nuclear energy and state interventions. Blockades and sabotage actions everywhere along the route severely delayed the arrival of the Castor train in Dannenberg, where the containers were loaded onto trucks for the final kilometres of their journey.

Despite a deployment of 18,000 police in the area - resembling a military occupation of a whole region - police were only able to crack the blockades using extreme force and brutality. Dozens of protesters have been injured in violent police raids on sit-down protests, at least five protesters were temporarily in critical condition. On a regular basis, activists and local residents were subject to arbitrary controls, arrests, and illegal occupation of private land by police. Whole busloads of protesters were arrested immediately after arriving in the area. As police from all over the country were transferred to the Wendland in order to force through the shipment against any resistance, demonstrations under the slogan "Our cops are staying at home" took place in many German towns and cities.

alien8

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