Demo, Norwegian Embassy, London over Norwegian involvement in Irish gas pipeline

23.03.2007

Sta­toil, Nor­way’s state owned oil com­pa­ny has inter­ests in a gas pipeline being con­struct­ed in Ire­land. Many locals oppose its con­struc­tion. Their protests against the pipeline have been policed in a heavy hand­ed way. The protest was tak­en to the Nor­we­gian embassy in Lon­don yes­ter­day.

The non-vio­lent protest out­side the Nor­we­gian embassy start­ed at around mid­day and con­tin­ued for more than an hour. Police were called but no arrests made. A sam­ba band played and and one police­man com­plained that the band real­ly need­ed a string sec­tion. It was a good humoured demo, but the point was made. I have per­son­al­ly seen a video of the protests in Ire­land and was shocked at the vio­lent way the police delt with often quite elder­ly pro­test­ers who include local fish­er­men and farm­ers. I saw them being beat­en with bat­tons, pushed and punched.
Press release by demon­stra­tors.
The demon­stra­tion held yes­ter­day 22nd March, 2007, by a nation­wide autonomous col­lec­tive, was high­light­ing Nor­way’s state-owned Sta­toild and gas com­pa­ny’s present involve­ment in the pro­posed gas pipeline adn refin­ery devel­op­ment in the West of Ire­land at Ross­port, coun­ty Mayo.
Sta­toil has an alleged eth­i­cal pol­i­cy, but there are not ethics involved in this devel­op­ment and no local sup­port or con­sul­ta­tion. The com­pa­ny, and thus the Nor­we­gian gov­ern­ment, are pro­mot­ing human rights abus­es by sup­port­ing the Irish State’s pol­i­cy of bru­tal sup­pres­sion of the right to protest using the Irish police (Gar­da), and pol­lut­ing Car­row­more Lake, the local drink­ing water sup­ply.
This group is issu­ing a demand to Nor­way and Sta­toil to stop its part in this devel­op­ment or face a call for a tourist boy­cott of Nor­way and dis­rup­tion of Nor­we­gian trade and com­merce to the UK.

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220307_Nor_Emb — video/x‑ms-wmv 8.4M

From the press release:

“The demon­stra­tion held today, by a nation-wide autonomous col­lec­tive (and one dog), was high­light­ing Nor­way’s state-owned Sta­toil and gas com­pa­ny’s present involve­ment in the West of Ire­land at Ross­port, Coun­ty Mayo.

Sta­toil has an alleged “eth­i­cal pol­i­cy”, but there are no ethics involved in this devel­op­ment and no local sup­port or con­sul­ta­tion. The com­pa­ny, and thus the Nor­we­gian gov­ern­ment, are pro­mot­ing human rights abus­es by sup­port­ing the Irish State’s pol­i­cy of bru­tal sup­pres­sion of the right to protest using the Irish police (Gar­da), and pol­lut­ing Car­row­more Lake, the local drink­ing water sup­ply.
This group is issu­ing a demand to Nor­way and Sta­toil to stop its part in this devel­op­ment or face a call for a tourist boy­cott of Nor­way and dis­rup­tion of Nor­we­gian trade and com­merce to the UK.”
The dog bit was not in the orig­i­nal release, that was my lil’ add on. So, sue me.

As the video shows the ban­ner block­ing the door last­ed as long as it took the ten or more heav­i­ly armed police offi­cers from the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Diplo­mat­ic Divi­sion to arrive. They removed the ban­ner imme­di­ate­ly and ush­ered the pro­tes­tors into one spe­cif­ic area of the pave­ment.

Two Irish cit­i­zens then decid­ed to try to apply for a Nor­we­gian pass­port, as Nor­way has prof­it­ed mas­sive­ly from Irish nat­ur­al resources, pro­duc­ing far supe­ri­or health and edu­ca­tion prospects in Nor­way than in Ire­land. So they fig­ured the least Nor­way could give back was a free pass­port and access to their health care.

The rep­re­sen­ta­tive, as the video shows, seemed to find the whole thing fun­ny at first, but watch his smile drop as he is shown print­ed images from the recent mon­th’s of vio­lence the local com­mu­ni­ty of Ross­port have suf­fered at the hands of the Gar­da.

As report­ed in the 6 Novem­ber 2006 release of Gar­da Review, Super­in­ten­dent Joe Gan­non, who is in charge of polic­ing the Shell/Statoil Cor­rib Gas Ter­mi­nal con­struc­tion site, was quot­ed: “There were no arrests. That was part of our strat­e­gy; we did not want to facil­i­tate any­one down there with a route to mar­tyr­dom. There has been that pol­i­cy ever since.”

No arrests. But baton charges, throw­ing old men and women in ten-foot deep trench­es, punch­ing, kick­ing, mar­tial arts tech­niques and dai­ly intim­i­da­tion are accept­able, it seems from this jour­nal­ist’s own expe­ri­ences over the last month.