Rath Lugh Direct Action Camp Evicted

thurs­day 17th April
Eye­wit­ness account of todays events at Rath Lugh

Short­ly before 1 o clock today there was a peace­ful evic­tion of the Rath Lugh Camp. Four Pro­tec­tors who were on site were told by Gar­dai that they had to be out by 1 o clock and to gath­er up their belong­ings and leave. This was not done in an aggres­sive man­ner and was com­plied with by the Pro­tec­tors.

Once they had left the woods no one was allowed back in. There were 20 Gar­dai, 3 Gar­da Cars plus 2 Vans as well as about a dozen Con­struc­tion Work­ers at the entrance to the woods as this was hap­pen­ing. A steel fence has now been erect­ed sep­a­rat­ing the Rath from the pub­lic road. A mini dig­ger is busy cre­at­ing a path and a low loader is in situ.

In a sin­is­ter twist after the evic­tion, a female Pro­tec­tor was tak­ing pho­tographs from her car when she was approached by a man with an MD SECURITY yel­low vest on and wear­ing a Bal­a­cla­va! This was about 200mt from Gar­dai. He was harass­ing her about tak­ing pho­tographs even though she was per­fect­ly enti­tled to do so and parked on a pub­lic road. Amaz­ing­ly when she made a com­plaint to a Gar­da he denied that there were any men in bal­a­clavas in the vicin­i­ty. Just as he said that, 2 Secu­ri­ty men ran past them, both wear­ing bal­a­clavas! The Gar­da refused to do any­thing about this and threat­ened to arrest her under the Hous­ing and Mis­cel­la­neous Act!!!

Mark Cleary has just appeared with his cam­era.

There will be a video of this inci­dent and the evic­tion issued short­ly.

http://www.tarapixie.net

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6:30pm — anoth­er update — the pro­tec­tor is still in the tree house and they are try­ing to knock him down.
The camp has been com­plete­ly thrashed and when some peo­ple tried to retrieve their belong­ings they were told that they would be arrest­ed if they entered the woods.
The mood of con­struc­tion work­ers and oper­a­tors is very threat­en­ing, bags of belong­ings being cut with stan­ley knives etc.
There is no one to doc­u­ment what is going on.
There is a dig­ger destroy­ing the round house appar­ent­ly …
They were told that no one is allowed into the wood any more.
They are not allowed to clean up — which was the inten­tion over the next num­ber of days.
What is real­ly wor­ry­ing is that one well known oper­a­tor flashed some doc­u­ments at the pro­tes­tors and said that SIAC had just bought the whole wood from Coillte.