Global Actions Against Heavy Industry

12.09.2007 — Today, peo­ple in South Africa, Ice­land, Trinidad, Den­mark and Amer­i­ca are protest­ing against heavy indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion. This is the first coor­di­nat­ed event of a new and grow­ing glob­al move­ment that began at the 2007 Sav­ing Ice­land protest camp in Ölfus, Ice­land. The com­mon tar­get of these protests against heavy indus­try is the alu­mini­um indus­try, in par­tic­u­lar the cor­po­ra­tions Alcan/Rio-Tin­to and Alcoa.

South Africa, around 250 peo­ple have marched on Alcan’s head­quaters in Johanas­burg to protest against Alcan’s pref­er­en­tial ener­gy treat­ment, ahead of a pop­u­la­tion of which 30% have no access to elec­tric­i­ty. Alcan is to be pro­vid­ed with coal and nuclear pow­ered ener­gy for a new smelter in the East­ern Cape that will con­sume as much elec­tric­i­ty as half of Cape Town, at some of the low­est tar­riffs in the world. Today the entrance to the Alcan HQ was blocked for one and a half hours with no one com­ming in or out.

The organ­i­sa­tion Earth­life Africa Jhb, whose mem­ber Ler­a­to Maregele attend­ed the Sav­ing Ice­land 2007 Con­fer­ence and protest camp, are tak­ing part in the demon­stra­tion and have the fol­low­ing demands: First, Alcan and Eskom, the nation­al pow­er com­pa­ny, ful­ly dis­close all the details of their deal, includ­ing the actu­al price of elec­tric­i­ty sold. Sec­ond, that Eskom allo­cate a basic life­line of 100kwh per month to every South African.

Ice­land, despite ter­ri­ble winds and rain today, there have been protests out­side the gov­ern­ment offices in Reyk­javik and a gath­er­ing along the islands next pro­posed dam route, along the riv­er Thjor­sa (Þjórsá) at 3pm GMT. Also, the Ice­landic Min­is­ter for the Envi­ron­ment, Thórunn Svein­b­jarnardót­tir, was vis­it­ed at her home this morn­ing to have a friend­ly chat with activists and receive a let­ter ask­ing her to clear up her seem­ing­ly con­tra­dic­to­ry green opin­ions.

The Ice­landic gov­ern­ment is try­ing to rush through the con­struc­tion of numer­ous new and expand­ed alu­mini­um smelters to bring the islands total alu­mini­um out­put up to three mil­lion tonnes per year. These hydro and geot­her­mal pow­ered heavy indus­try projects have been con­demned by envi­ron­men­tal sci­en­tists and lob­by­ing groups. Three dam reser­voirs are to be cre­at­ed along the Thjor­sa riv­er, where pro­test­ers have gath­ered, to pow­er a new Alcoa smelter near the north­ern town of Husavik, or an expan­sion of the Alcan plant in Haf­nar­fjor­dur which was vetoed in a local ref­er­en­dum.

“Unem­ploy­ment in Ice­land is 0.9%. So this destruc­tion is only based on the greed of Landsvirkjun [the nation­al pow­er com­pa­ny] and has no eco­nom­i­cal log­ic. We are here to show sup­port with the local farm­ers who are fight­ing against Landsvirkjun to defend their land and our land.”
— Sav­ing Ice­land activist Sig­gi Hardar­son.

Trinidad, activists are remem­ber­ing the first anniver­sary of an action in which peo­ple con­front­ed plans for an Alcoa smelter in the rur­al town of Chatam; whilst lawyers are regroup­ing ahead of a legal bat­tle against the Envi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Author­i­ty, rep­re­sent­ing heavy indus­try, that will be piv­otal in the islands devel­op­ment.

“Sep­tem­ber 12 2006 was the day that activists con­front­ed trac­tors and police on Food­crop Road and this day will for­ev­er live in the hearts and minds of activists in
Trinidad and Toba­go as a cru­cial moment of our fight for envi­ron­men­tal and
social jus­tice.”
— Attil­lah Springer, Rights Action Group

Pres­sure from grass­roots actions such as this per­suad­ed Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning to drop plans to build the Alcoa smelter in Chatam. Con­front­ed by four cas­es against them­selves, the EMA, whose two main stake­hold­ers are NEC and the alu­mini­um cor­po­ra­tion Alutrint, were sig­nif­i­cant­ly turned down by the Judge in their plea that three NGO’s — RAG, PURE and Smelta Kar­a­van should not be able to bring action against them. This impor­tant rul­ing recog­nis­es that the issue of heavy indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion is to Trinidad nation­al, not mere­ly local. The peo­ple Vs EMA con­tin­ues on Thurs­day 13th Sep­tem­ber.

Den­mark, at 6pm CEST (4pm GMT) this evening a crowd will march to the Ice­landic embassy and the Green­land’s Rep­re­sen­ta­tion Office with a ban­ner that reads “Glob­al Strug­gle Against Heavy Indus­try”. Talks will be giv­en on the glob­al fight against heavy indus­try and the move­ment of resis­tance. Alcoa is in the plan­ning stage of a smelter project in Green­land whilst the prime min­is­ter Hans Enok­sen is present­ly in New York to seek loans to finance the hydropow­er project.

In Aus­tralia, res­i­dents in the West have acquired the sup­port of US Attor­ney Erin Brock­ovitch in a legal bat­tle against Alcoa. The cor­po­ra­tion intends to dou­ble the out­put of its oper­a­tions in the region whilst res­i­dents of the near­by town Yarloop are demand­ing that Alcoa relo­cate them. They claim that they are “liv­ing in a tox­ic bub­ble” and that their health has dra­mat­i­cal­ly suf­fered due to Alcoa’s work.

Fur­ther actions may be tak­ing place, we shall send updates out as soon as we get them.

saving­ice­land [at] riseup.net
http://www.savingiceland.org