Rossport: 150 people attempt to take down Shell’s compound

On Sat­ur­day 9th May approx 150 S2S sup­port­ers both from across the coun­try and with­in the local com­mu­ni­ty have made a sus­tained effort to halt the ongo­ing work at the head of the pro­posed Shell pipeline at its site in Glen­gad. Peo­ple of all ages par­tic­pat­ed in the action, where ropes and chains where used to attempt to pull down the out­er fenc­ing of the site.

On Sat­ur­day 9th May approx 150 S2S sup­port­ers both from across the coun­try and with­in the local com­mu­ni­ty have made a sus­tained effort to halt the ongo­ing work at the head of the pro­posed Shell pipeline at its site in Glen­gad. Peo­ple of all ages par­tic­pat­ed in the action, where ropes and chains where used to attempt to pull down the out­er fenc­ing of the site. These effort have so far been repulsed by a very large secu­ri­ty oper­a­tion from both the state and pri­vate secu­ri­ty firm IRM secu­ri­ty. There is in excess of 150 gar­da, incud­ing the noto­ri­ous pub­lic order units. Most are post­ed and lined out at the out­side rear of the com­pound, com­pli­ment­ed on the inside by a fur­ther 100 hired hands IRM Secu­ri­ty

At present there have been some “arrests ” of sup­port­ers at tonight action so far. Fig­ures at present range from 6–8. These peo­ple are being phys­i­cal­ly detained but the cops are refus­ing to offi­cial­ly arrest them, or at least refus­ing to com­ment pub­li­cal­ly that the arrests have been made, and won’t tell observers which Gar­da sta­tion those detained are being tak­en to. Gar­da seem to be delib­er­ate tar­get­ing peo­ple from out­side the local area, and avoid­ing arrest­ing local mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty. It has been sug­gest­ed that this make much bet­ter media cov­er­age, no doubt some of which we will see in tomor­row papers. There is a prison van, the type used to car­ry pris­on­sers to court, inside the com­pound where Shell and secu­ri­ty staff work. Whilst there is move­ment of cops in and out of the van, it is unclear if peo­ple are being detained in it at the moment.

The sit­u­a­tion has been described by one sup­port­er as calm, though there are con­ti­n­ung skir­mish­es as peo­ple attempt to dis­rupt the ongo­ing con­tro­ver­sial and devi­sive work being car­ried out by Shell again­ist the wish­es of the local com­mu­ni­ty.