Two Fishermen in Hospital After Boat Boarded and Sunk by Masked Men in Ireland

The sit­u­a­tion in Erris Co. Mayo has esca­lat­ed into a sor­did state of affairs, with two fish­er­men being held by force by two men in bal­a­clavas at 2am on Thurs­day the 11th of June. The fish­er­men, Pat O’Donnell and Mar­tin McDon­nell, are both locals opposed to the con­tro­ver­sial Cor­rib gas project which is cur­rent­ly being over­seen by The Roy­al Dutch Shell Com­pa­ny.
The two fish­er­men were return­ing to Bal­ly­glass pier, hav­ing been fish­ing out at sea, when their boat was board­ed by four masked men. When Mr. O’Donnell and Mr. McDon­nell had been ren­dered help­less, the board­ers pro­ceed­ed to move below decks and sink the ‘Iona Isle’, the trawler belong­ing to Mr. O’Donnell. Both men are now being tend­ed to in Castle­bar gen­er­al hos­pi­tal.

These attacks come short­ly after rough­ly thir­ty Shell to Sea activists appeared in Bell­mul­let dis­trict court yes­ter­day for assort­ed acts of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence relat­ing to the pro­posed pipeline project. How­ev­er a num­ber of mem­bers of An Gar­da Síochan­na were also sum­moned by the judge for pos­si­ble acts of mis­con­duct, mis­use of author­i­ty and ille­gal behav­iour relat­ing to Shell to Sea protests.

The assaults car­ried out on the fish­er­men bear an uncan­ny resem­blance to that which occurred almost a month and a half ago on local farmer and Gold­man envi­ron­men­tal prize win­ner Willie Cor­duff.

The recent devel­op­ments here in Erris are becom­ing an increas­ing cause for con­cern for local peo­ple attempt­ing to halt Shell’s work in order to defend their own liveli­hoods. Many fam­i­lies here are com­plete­ly depen­dent on the local envi­ron­ment to pro­duce a source of income. Hav­ing fish­ing grounds pol­lut­ed by dredg­ing work, or pipelines dragged through one’s fields is like­ly to evoke strong protest. Albeit most local peo­ple who oppose the project ini­tial­ly felt that there was lit­tle or no chance of the sit­u­a­tion unrav­el­ling to the extent it would be so effort­less­ly com­pa­ra­ble to the Ogo­ni saga in Nige­ria.

More activists were arrest­ed yes­ter­day evening after they had assist­ed local men in bar­ri­cad­ing nar­row choke points of road which lead to the Shell com­pound at Glen­gad, which is still devoid of the suf­fi­cient plan­ning per­mis­sion. One man had hoist­ed him­self up onto the cab of a truck in an attempt to halt the ille­gal work, much to the sur­prise of local peo­ple and Gar­da present at the scene. The dri­ver elect­ed to accel­er­ate down a steep hill with the man still on top of the vehi­cle. Two Shell to Sea activists were vio­lent­ly appre­hend­ed on the road and brought to Bell­mul­let Gar­da sta­tion where they’ve been held all night. They have been brought to court this morn­ing with­out legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion and the state is attempt­ing to put them on remand. This means they will be held in jail until the next court hear­ing in July.

Also at half four ear­li­er this morn­ing four­teen peo­ple from the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp dis­rupt­ed work whilst kayak­ing in bay where Shell are cur­rent­ly dredg­ing. This result­ed in the arrest of six peo­ple and police also slashed kayaks. Over the past ten days dredgers have been board­ed on two occa­sions where activists climbed on top of dig­gers and stopped work. A num­ber of injuries have been sus­tained dur­ing water actions injuries at the hands of the IRMS secu­ri­ty, employed by Shell to trit­u­rate the cam­paign oppos­ing the theft of bil­lions of euro worth of gas.

The glob­al pres­sure has been mount­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly on Shell in recent times, with much media focus sur­round­ing the Wiwa fam­i­ly law­suits against them in New York. Shell was being sued for human rights abus­es in the Ogo­ni region of Nige­ria dat­ing back to the ear­ly nineties, how­ev­er Shell decid­ed to set­tle out of court to the sum of $15.5 mil­lion dol­lars.

In the face of one of the world’s biggest multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions backed by the state and a team of secu­ri­ty, many of whom are known fas­cists and mer­ce­nar­ies, the com­mu­ni­ty still stand strong in defence of their envi­ron­ment and liveli­hoods. The Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp is pro­vid­ing active sup­port to the com­mu­ni­ty, please come and help!