A busy week here in Mayo

Work con­tin­ues in Glen­gad, but so does action resist­ing the pipeline. The Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp is active and run­ning, so please come and vis­it! Come and see what is hap­pen­ing with your own eyes, and bring what­ev­er skills and tal­ents you would like to share. Here is a five day update.

Wednes­day 10 June

Bel­mul­let Cour­t­house:
There was a packed cour­t­house in Bel­mul­let on Wednes­day with 31 Shell to Sea peo­ple up in court. The tim­ing of this court date is unde­ni­ably polit­i­cal, con­sid­er­ing 13 of the charges were from Sep­tem­ber 2008. Pre­sum­ably court has been timed to coin­cide with the immi­nent arrival of the Soli­taire. There was a new judge in place of Mary Devins, judge Denis Mclaugh­lan. Only one case was heard that day, and the rest of them had their cas­es adjourned until the 8th of July. The num­bers on camp grew on Wednes­day as many peo­ple who had to return for court remained on camp.

Truck block­ade:
Around 5:30pm on Wednes­day, locals and sup­port­ers attempt­ed to block a con­voy of four trucks along the road to the Shell com­pound. Peo­ple moved plas­tic bar­ri­cades into the road by the grave­yard in Glen­gad, leav­ing enough room for cars but caus­ing the Shell trucks to have to stop in the road up by Kil­com­mon Lodge. The trucks were car­ry­ing grav­el and hard­core for build­ing the cause­way at the Shell com­pound on the beach in Glen­gad where the pipeline is pro­posed to come ashore. While the trucks were stopped, one per­son attempt­ed to speak with the dri­vers, engag­ing in heat­ed but civilised con­ver­sa­tion with one of them. The main argu­ment was that when peo­ple’s lives are at risk, it is no longer ‘just a job’. As this con­ver­sa­tion was going on, the truck at the front of the queue start­ed to move, and a pro­tes­tor jumped onto the back of it and climbed into the bed of the truck. After the dri­ver was informed that a pro­tes­tor was aboard the truck he slowed down a bit but con­tin­ued to dri­ve until final­ly com­ing to a stop after about 100 metres. The pro­test­er sat on top of the cab of the truck until the gar­dai arrived and after about 10–15 min­utes began to force­ful­ly remove the pro­test­er.

As this was hap­pen­ing on top of the truck two peo­ple climbed under­neath it. The gar­dai moved in and wres­tled one pro­tes­tor out from under the truck. As he was on the ground guards grabbed one of his feet and raised it above waist height, he was then dragged across the road in this posi­tion caus­ing a con­sid­er­able amount of pain. Sev­er­al gar­da then climbed under­neath the truck and vio­lent­ly dragged the oth­er per­son out. Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly four gar­dai were remov­ing the per­son from the top of the truck, lift­ing him over their heads and slid­ing him down the side onto the road. Offi­cer MY2 made a ver­bal promise to the pro­test­er that he would take down the details of the truck dri­ver because of his reck­less dri­ving. Final­ly after 10–15 min­utes of being pinned to the ground with his arm twist­ed behind his back, the per­son on the ground was brought to a stand­ing posi­tion and arrest­ed, though none of the gar­dai would explain what he was being arrest­ed for when asked. He fell to the ground as he was being put into the police van, and had to be lift­ed into the van by sev­er­al gar­da.

Though the per­son who had been on top of the truck was not imme­di­ate­ly arrest­ed, soon after­wards he was arrest­ed under three charges: obstruct­ing traf­fic, breach of the peace, and refus­ing to obey the orders of a gar­da. Both arrestees were held in cus­tody overnight and brought to court in West­port the next morn­ing before they’d recieved legal aid. The gar­dai attempt­ed to have them both put on remand, which means they’d be put in jail until the next court date on 8 July. They also have begun ask­ing for bail, from 100 euro to 500 euro, some­thing which has­n’t been done at all in the past sev­er­al years of the cam­paign. This seems to be a polit­i­cal move by An Gar­da Síochá­na in an attempt to repress the cam­paign. There is no rea­son to sus­pect peo­ple of flight risk, as there has nev­er been a prob­lem with peo­ple show­ing up to court in the past. When asked why they are doing this, the only expla­na­tion is that ‘this is the new pol­i­cy’. How­ev­er it is not clear whether this is the new pol­i­cy for any­one arrest­ed in Ire­land, or whether it is some­thing put in place strate­gi­cal­ly to deal with polit­i­cal pro­tes­tors. The two truck-block­ers were held until the next morn­ing, and brought to court the next day. One of them was forced to go to Cas­tle Rea prison to sign his 500 euro bail. He was released at 6pm on Thurs­day after being held for 24 hours for a sim­ple breach of the peace.

Thurs­day 11 June

Sink­ing of the Chief’s boat- Defin­i­tive account from Pat him­self:

Pat O’Don­nel­l’s fish­ing boat was board­ed by four masked men, two of whom were armed with guns, at approx­i­mate­ly 2am on 11 June whilst out at sea lay­ing pots. The two armed men held Mr O’Don­nell and his crew­man Mar­tin McDon­nell in the wheel­house of the boat while anoth­er two went below deck for 20 min­utes. These men returned to the deck and the two crew mem­bers were held for one and a half hours until the engine went out. At this point the masked men alight­ed onto an unknown ves­sel that took them away. None of the men spoke good Eng­lish. Mr O’Don­nell went down to the engine room and realised that the boat was sinking.The two fish­er­men put out a may­day sig­nal and attempt­ed to inflate their lifeboat. The infla­tion mech­a­nism failed a num­ber of times but even­tu­al­ly worked with only moments left to spare. Once onboard the lifeboat Mr O’Don­nell and Mr McDon­nell sent out a dis­tress flare. They were res­cued at 4.30am by the ‘Rachel Mary’, anoth­er boat owned by Pat O’Donnell and oper­at­ed by his son, fish­er­man, Jonathan O’Donnell. He then rang the Gar­dai at around 6am to inform them of the inci­dent.

Pat said “I was in fear for my life, is there no end to what these thugs will try to do? AIl I am try­ing to do is pro­tect my fam­i­ly and the seas that are our liveli­hood. I told Min­ster O’Cuiv in April that I need­ed pro­tec­tion by the state, but he would­n’t give it — now its time for the gov­ern­ment to pro­tect its peo­ple. I won’t be intim­i­dat­ed by this.”

Pat O’Donnell is a local fish­er­man with over thir­ty years expe­ri­ence in the waters off the coast of Ire­land. It is assumed that Pat O’Don­nell was tar­get­ed as he is one of the loud­est objec­tors to Shel­l’s Cor­rib Gas Project. As a fifth gen­er­a­tion fish­er­man his liveli­hood will be severe­ly affect­ed by pol­lu­tion from the cor­rib project into Broad­haven bay. Deter­mined to pro­tect the waters for future gen­er­a­tions of fish­er­men, Mr. O’Don­nell has con­sis­tent­ly refused to be paid off by Shell.

http://www.indymedia.ie/article/92657

Ear­ly morn­ing water action:

At 4:30am, 14 kayak­ers set out to try and dis­rupt the works being car­ried out in prepa­ra­tion for the lay­ing of the off­shore pipeline in Broad­haven Bay. The gar­dai were quick­ly on the scene, and began arrest­ing peo­ple under pub­lic order charges, fail­ure to obey the instruc­tions of a gar­da. Over the course of an hour, work was sucess­ful­ly dis­rupt­ed and six peo­ple were arrest­ed. The gar­dai con­fis­cat­ed the six kayaks of the arrestees, slash­ing five of the inflat­able kayaks with knives. The gards have height­ened their intim­i­da­tion tac­tics, telling first offense arrestees that they may have to spend a week in prison sim­ply for a breach of the peace vio­la­tion. They are doing what­ev­er they can to dis­cour­age peo­ple from doing fur­ther actions against Shell, attempt­ing to put peo­ple on remand, charg­ing dis­pro­por­tion­ate amounts for unnec­es­sary bail, and arbi­trar­i­ly attempt­ing to get peo­ple ‘banned’ from Broad­haven Bay. Alle­ga­tions that this ear­ly morn­ing action kept res­cue teams from respond­ing to Pat O’Don­nel­l’s dis­tress sig­nal are unfound­ed. The kayak action was unre­lat­ed to that inci­dent, and is fair­ly unim­por­tant com­pared to the seri­ous­ness of the attack on Pat and Mar­tin.

Fri­day 12 June

Ear­ly Fri­day morn­ing, a local bus dri­ver was fol­lowed by the gar­dai on his bus route, then arrest­ed in his own home after he had dropped the bus full of kids off at school. The gar­dai claimed to have video footage of him tak­ing part in the removal of nets. The ind­ci­dent hap­pened in April when near­ly 200 local res­i­dents and sup­port­ers went to take the nets down from the spe­cial area of con­ser­va­tion where the endan­gered sand mar­tins nest. How­ev­er the footage was unre­li­able and accord­ing to the per­son he was not even at the protest that day, so the gar­dai let him go with­out charg­ing him. To arbi­trar­i­ly arrest a per­son in their home near­ly two months after an event with­out sub­stan­tial evi­dence is plain ter­ror­ism.

At 10am Fri­day morn­ing, a local res­i­dent blocked Shell trucks from pass­ing his house by park­ing his car in the road. His house has been dam­aged due to the heavy traf­fic from Shel­l’s trucks on a road unsuit­able for haulage and after reciev­ing no response from the Mayo Coun­ty Coun­cil, he took action. The trucks turned around, promis­ing that there would be no traf­fic for ‘a few days.’ The gar­dai were informed that this action was going to take place before­hand, and they did not try to arrest him. The local com­mu­ni­ty has vowed to con­tin­ue the block­ade once the trucks start up again.

Sun­day 14 June
Late Sun­day night a group of 7 kayak­ers set out to dis­rupt the dredg­ing going on in Broad­haven Bay, but were instant­ly met with a fleet of 9 motor­boats. Work was stopped for about 15 min­utes, and one kayak­er was cap­sized by one of the secu­ri­ty boats. They took the inflat­able kayak into their motor­boat and left the per­son swim­ming in the water. One of the secu­ri­ty guards grabbed hold of the per­son by the neck of his life­jack­et and dragged him through the water. When oth­er kayak­ers tried to inter­vene, they were vio­lent­ly dealt with by the secu­ri­ty boat who pro­ceed­ed to take one kayak­er’s pad­dle and aban­don her there. Despite this aggres­sive behav­ior on the part of the Shell secu­ri­ty, every­one made it back to shore safe­ly. Peo­ple are in high spir­its here at the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp, and the resis­tance will con­tin­ue as long as the work on this project does!