update on resistance to High-Speed Railway in the Basque Country

Soci­ety has open­ly giv­en response to the High-Speed Train (HST) in the lat­ter times. We know, and so do they, that we are many peo­ple against HST. In Hen­daya, there were more than 15.000 peo­ple in a recent demon­stra­tion against this project. Many ref­er­en­dums were placed and the response against the project was wide­ly sup­port­ed. There have been also many pub­lic appear­ances and actions all over. But pow­er does­n’t seem to lis­ten and the sit­u­a­tion is get­ting worse day by day. Civ­il dis­obe­di­ence and direct action are the only means we have left to stop the HSP project, and that’s why four activists took the deci­sion to take part in this action, putting their lives in dan­ger. It’s been three days now since 4 activists decid­ed to go inside a tun­nel in the mines in Itsason­do (Gipuzkoa, in the Basque Coun­try). They are actu­al­ly blocked and chained inside the tun­nel with no way to go out by them­selves. Even if their sit­u­a­tion has gone pub­lic, none of the pub­lic orga­ni­za­tions involved have tak­en any mea­sures or orga­nized any res­cue team. This has put their lives in seri­ous dan­ger. Besides, the explo­sions and the nor­mal oper­a­tions in the mines have not been stopped, mak­ing this dan­ger even worse. As a result, we are fac­ing a real­ly dan­ger­ous sce­nario, not only because the explo­sions have not been stopped, but also because pub­lic pow­ers are act­ing with absolute neglect, putting the lives of the activists in real seri­ous risk. How can it be pos­si­ble that in these times when life is pub­licly extolled, pub­lic pow­ers show so lit­tle respect for the lives of those cit­i­zens? How can all those who talk so much about “the peo­ple’s choice” go on with their project to build the High-Speed Train, after many peo­ple and orga­ni­za­tions have wide­ly showed their refusal to this infra­stuc­ture? For all these rea­sons we encour­age peo­ple to join us in the demon­stra­tion that will be held tomor­row, 4th of July in Ordizia (Gipuzkoa-Basque Coun­try), 5 o’clock in the after­noon, and also to show their sup­port to the activists in the mine by com­ing to the sup­port camp in Itsason­do (Gipuzkoa).

2010-07-04
Under the slo­gan “Till stop­ping HST, resis­tance in Itsason­do’s mines” a demon­stra­tion left Ordizia yes­ter­day in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the ini­tia­tive of four activists whom chained them­selves inside a mine on Thurs­day. At the same time, the demo demand­ed the cease of works for the High Speed Train. The event linked the towns of Ordizia and Bea­sain, mak­ing two stops in the works of this infra­struc­ture, which par­tic­u­lar­ly affects the val­ley of Goier­ri. The atti­tude of the Region­al Home Depart­ment and the Basque Rail­way Net­work ignor­ing the pres­ence of the activists inside the mines and con­tin­u­ing with the works has pro­voked big anger which was noti­ci­ble dur­ing the demon­stra­tion. After teh demo, a large group of demon­stra­tors cut the rail­way rail traf­fic for at least five min­utes after tak­ing over the Beasin RENFE train sta­tion (RENFE, the Spainsh rail­way com­pa­ny is the oth­er com­pan­ny involved in the project). The ral­ly yes­ter­day was not the only event held in sol­i­dar­i­ty with activists in recent days. On the evening of Fri­day, unknown activists cut the water sup­ply for the Mari­aratz con­struc­tion site, where activists are chained. the action aimed also to show their dis­gust at the atti­tude of the insti­tu­tions regard­ing the 4 chained activists and to dis­rupt in the same way the con­struc­tion of this infra­struc­ture. Remain under­ground Mean­while, the four activists, who are now into their fifth day chained to con­crete-filled drums with­out the option of leav­ing on his own feet, noticed their health dete­ri­o­rat­ing because of the harsh con­se­quences of the mines, main­ly high damp­ness and wet­ness. Yes­ter­day morn­ing a walk hap­pened too with the aim of com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the activists, who said that they were “very tired and weak.” They were affect­ed by the high humid­i­ty inside the mines where they are. There were no search Haitzu­lue­tako Aurkari­ak (activist group) announced the exact loca­tion where the chain activists were last Sat­ur­day, in order to force a new search. The region­al police claimed to have no record of the pres­ence of these activists in the area. There­fore, the sup­port group isist­ed for the search to be repeat­ed. Appar­ent­ly the Ertzaintza did not enter the area dur­ing all day yes­ter­day. The action start­ed on Thurs­day morn­ing, but the explo­sions for the con­struc­tion of the HST tun­nel did not stop. There were con­stant blast­ing on Thurs­day and Fri­day and even the chained activists felt detach­ments of walls and ceil­ing inside the mine. Accord­ing to the loca­tion they gave on Sat­ur­day, the activists would be in the 4th min­ing zone with­in the Ordizia-Itsason­do con­struc­tion site, a few meters from the core of the explo­sions.

A day lat­er (5/07/2010) the Basque police, the Ertzaintza, have evict­ed the four anti TAV activists who have been locked-on in the Itsason­do mines. The first two are cur­rent­ly (17:30) on their way to the sta­tion to give evi­dence, after going to the health cen­tre for a check-up. The last two have since been evict­ed from the mines. Through­out the after­noon about a 100 peo­ple have been gath­er­ing at the mouth of the mine to show sol­i­dar­i­ty with the activists. They have been charged with “pub­lic dis­or­der, resis­tance and dis­obe­di­ence to author­i­ty.”

On 6th July, despite the TAV trucks hav­ing secu­ri­ty escorts, we sat in front of the vehi­cles. The truck dri­ver was very aggres­sive, grab­bing us by the throat and threat­en­ing us. He drove at us, so we got out of the way before being hit. He tried to attack with a club, but the secu­ri­ty guards restrained him! We denounce this aggres­sion and will con­tin­ue to resist from the Leginetxe squat­ted work­ers’ cot­tages.

There will be a protest action camp against the TAV from 26th July to 1st August.