Wilderness defence
Here is the video round-up; see elsewhere for words! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypOh-tK6Xa0
Here is the video round-up; see elsewhere for words! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypOh-tK6Xa0
May 22, 2011
The land acquisition for the proposed mega steel project of Posco in Orissa’s Jagatsinghpur district has been postponed following stiff resistance from villagers supporting as well as opposing the venture.
May 22, 2011
The land acquisition for the proposed mega steel project of Posco in Orissa’s Jagatsinghpur district has been postponed following stiff resistance from villagers supporting as well as opposing the venture.
The State Government had to stop the land acquisition work on Friday after the villagers supporting the venture protested, demanding that the process be completely stopped till their six-point demands are met.
As many as 33 members of the United Action Committee (UAC), the group supporting the project, were arrested on Thursday when they blocked the entry of officials engaged in the land acquisition work. On Sunday, a large number of villagers supporting the UAC organised a rally in the area earmarked for the project reiterating their demands.
Meanwhile, Posco Pratirodh Sangram Samiti, the outfit that has been strongly opposing land acquisition for the project since 2005, has also decided to intensify its agitation in the coming days.
The Samiti has been demanding that the Government not acquire any land till the authorities organised Palli Sabha meetings in various villages to take the consent of the thousands of families that were to lose their land and livelihood sources.
The agitating villagers, who had staged a protest on May 18 when the authorities resumed land acquisition, have termed the Government action “illegal”.
The land acquisition work had shown little progress during the three days when administration officials entered the area amid heavy police presence to carry out the exercise. While the 1.52 acres of forest land was acquired by demolishing betel vineyards on May 18, it dropped to 72 decimals on May 19 and .27 acres on May 20.
In another development, the High Court has issued notices to the State Government and others on a petition challenging land acquisition for the project. The petition will come up for further hearing on May 25.
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/companies/article2040318.ece?homepage=true
On April 15, Purepechas from the indigenous community of Cherán detained a group of five loggers who were attempting to transport illegally-logged timber from their land.
On April 15, Purepechas from the indigenous community of Cherán detained a group of five loggers who were attempting to transport illegally-logged timber from their land.
Hoping to turn the loggers in, the Purepechas later informed local authorities about what had happened. But, two hours after doing so, a police car arrived in the community with two pick-ups that were occupied by more than a dozen heavily-armed men.
The armed men proceeded to open fire on the community, seriously injuring one person, Eugenio Sánchez Tiandón, who was shot in the head and remains in a coma.
Following the attack, the Purepecha, with few other options, declared an emergency “state of siege” and closed off all access points to the community.
The self-imposed state of siege is ongoing.
According to a May 5 report by Amnesty International, on April 23, “the community presented the five illegal loggers to representatives of the Federal Attorney General’s Office (Procuraduría General de la República, PGR) along with 140 complaints from residents.”
Four days later, another group of illegal loggers tried to gain access to the community; but they, too, were stopped by the Purepecha.
Unfortunately, the community came under fire once more–only this time, the armed men didn’t have a police escort. Two community members, Pedro Juárez Urbina and Armando Hernández Estrada, were killed in the attack.
It has been over three weeks since the two Purepecha men were killed on April 27; however, the community reports that warnings of reprisals have been sent to community leaders by the armed gang, which is believed to have ties to the main drug cartel in Michoacan.
According to the very latest reports on the “Cheran rebellion” as it’s been labelled by the press, the Mexican government has sent troops and federal police to patrol the outskirts of the community; something the Purepecha had been calling for since the state of siege began. But it remains to be see if they’ll actually do anything.
Providing some background, a community spokesperson recently told reporters that Cheran has been under attack for the past three years. Speaking on the condition that he remain anonymous, the spokesperson said that, since 2008, a total of nine people have been killed and five others have been disappeared.
In that same amount of time, Illegal loggers have deforested nearly 80 percent of the region’s 30,000-acre forest. “But during the past year, the groups seem to be supported by organized crime groups,” the spokesperson said.
14 May 2011
Over 700 Brazilian Indians from more than 230 tribes set up camp last week in the country’s capital city, Brasília, to urge the government to respect their rights.
14 May 2011
Over 700 Brazilian Indians from more than 230 tribes set up camp last week in the country’s capital city, Brasília, to urge the government to respect their rights.
Outraged by the advance of large scale infrastructure projects which threaten to devastate their land, the Indians marched, chanted and debated in the streets, calling on the government to act fast to prevent this destruction.
The Madeira dams, currently being built in the Amazon, are putting immense pressure on uncontacted Indians’ lands as migrants are arriving in the area and deforestation is increasing. The uncontacted Indians rely on their forest to survive and any form of contact with outsiders could be fatal for them.
The Belo Monte dam planned for the Xingu river in the Amazon threatens the livelihoods of thousands of tribal people, who have not given their consent for the dam to be built.
The protestors stated in an open letter, ‘We will not allow our Mother Earth, which we have been preserving for millennia and which contributes to the social and environmental sustainability of our country and of the world, to be torn away from us yet again, or destroyed irrationally’.
Last month, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights called on the Brazilian government to suspend the Belo Monte project, but Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff has refused to do so, and ordered an immediate break in the country’s relationship with the Commission.
Guarani Indians at the camp warned that the government is proceeding extremely slowly with its program to map out the tribe’s ancestral land, and that meanwhile, thousands of Guarani are living in overcrowded reserves or on the sides of main roads.
The current boom in sugarcane and ethanol production is of particular concern to the Guarani, some of whom have seen their lands taken over by sugarcane plantations.
Survival International is calling on energy giant Shell and its joint venture partner in Brazil, Cosan, to stop using sugarcane planted on the Guarani’s ancestral land to produce ethanol.
10 May 2011
Chile approved a hydroelectric project that would flood Patagonian valleys and become the country’s biggest power generator, sparking violent protests and more than a hundred arrests.
10 May 2011
Chile approved a hydroelectric project that would flood Patagonian valleys and become the country’s biggest power generator, sparking violent protests and more than a hundred arrests.
Police fired water cannons and tear gas at demonstrators outside the building in the city of Coyhaique where 11 of the 12 members of an environment commission voted in favor of the HidroAysen project that Santiago-based Empresa Nacional de Electricidad SA and Colbun SA (COLBUN) want to build.
HidroAysen’s five dams would flood nearly 6,000 hectares (14,800 acres) of land and require a 1,900 kilometer (1,180 mile) transmission line to feed the central grid that supplies Santiago and surrounding cities as well as copper mines owned by Codelco and Anglo American Plc. The government of President Sebastian Pinera says Chile needs more hydroelectric and coal- fired plants to meet demand that will double in the next decade and reduce power costs that are the highest in the region.
“We have to get that energy somewhere, independent of what the project is, because energy today is twice as expensive as in other Latin American countries,” Ena Von Baer, the government’s spokeswoman, told reporters yesterday in Santiago. “We want to be a developed country and to do that we need energy, especially cheap energy for the poor.”
Street March
Hundreds of protesters blocked the entrance to the room where the government’s regional representative Pilar Cuevas and other officials sat after yesterday’s meeting in Coyhaique. A police officer and at least one other person were injured by stones thrown by demonstrators, while more than 20 people were arrested during clashes with police involving tear gas and water cannons, regional governor Nestor Mera told reporters yesterday.
More than 120 were arrested last night in protests around the country, newspaper La Tercera reported. About 1,500 people gathered in a plaza in central Santiago before marching to the presidential palace, the newspaper reported. Police dispersed protesters who tried to block traffic in the downtown area.
—–
The results of the vote give the go-ahead to HidroAysén, a dam project run by the Italian group Endesa and its minority holding group the Chilean corporation Colbún, which holds a 49% stake in the project. The proposed series of dams would affect the Baker river, the most most voluminous in Chile, which attracts ecotourists, rafters and fishermen, and is an important ecological feature of the region. Project opponents say the project will badly impact 6 national parks, 11 national reserves, 12 important conservation sites, 16 wetlands and 32 privately-held protected areas. Meanwhile, proponents of the project project construction jobs and electricity production of 2.750 megawatts.
The organization Patagonia Sin Represas (Patagonia Without Dams) planned a peaceful protest in the wake of the approval, to take place at Plaza Italia, Santiago’s ground zero for demonstrations at 7:00 PM tonight. Thousands of people joined together, chanting (among other slogans), Piñera, entiende, Patagonia no se vende (Piñera (president of the Republic), understand, Patagonia is not for sale). Protesters held signs with messages opposing the project, including one written in English, shown below partially supported with a kayak paddle. When asked why their sign was in English, the protesters said it was for the international media.
The police then drove four buses along the curve of the street to block the protesters and their signs from view by the commuting public driving and walking east up Avenida Providencia, the street on which thousands of commuters travel home each weekday night.
At approximately 7:30 PM, the protesters attempted to cross the street from Plaza Italia and take over one direction of the Alameda (the main street which leads down towards the city centre), at which point the police shot water from water cannons at the protesters and began to release tear gas into the crowd. Many protesters scattered, and several offshoot groups tried to make their way down to the Moneda (the presidential palace) where tensions increased between the protesters and the police, and local news reported that 600 protesters arrived and later set several barricades aflame. As of approximately 10:00 PM a helicopter with a search beam could be seen overflying the Moneda and nearby streets.
Similar protests were planned in other cities throughout the length of Chile.
May 9, 2011
Residents from 10 Bidayuh villagers this week set fire to five logging camps and thirteen heavy machines in a stark protest against logging activities on their land, in the Malaysian state of Sarawak.
May 9, 2011
Residents from 10 Bidayuh villagers this week set fire to five logging camps and thirteen heavy machines in a stark protest against logging activities on their land, in the Malaysian state of Sarawak.
As reported by Free Malaysia Today, the Bidayuh villagers took matters into their own hands because of the governments refusal to address their complaints about logging activities within their Native Customary Rights (NCR) land.
One village leader, who did not wish to be identified, explained to reporters that, “We have made several reports to the authorities and yet the logging activities still continue[d],” adding that crops, fruit trees and land had already been destroyed by the activities.
He also said that they warned the workers to stop what they were doing, but the workers ignored them, much like the government. “We gave them ample time, and when they failed to adhere to our warning, we have to take action,” he said.
Shortly after the fire, an unnamed villager was quoted as saying, “They have tested our patience and we just cannot take it anymore. We have lodged several reports and complaints to the authorities, but the logging activities continued. We are fed up. Our rights have been encroached, our crops destroyed.”
Dr. Christopher Kiyui of the People’s Justice Party (PKR), who lost to Manyin in Sarawak’s recent election, told Radio Free Sarawak that 500 villagers had “burnt 13 Caterpillar and tractor machines and some lorries, around 10 in the morning [of May 9th, 2011]. About 50 people came from each village.”
Fortunately, no one was injured during the agitation. Similarly, no arrests have been made; however the police did step in several hours after the fires began. They just couldn’t do anything because they were so outnumbered.
Leading up to May 9th, the Bidayuh were already busy blocking the access road used by the workers to defend their land. Local assembly representative and state Infrastructure Development and Communications Minister Michael Manyin Jawong had also incensed the Bidayuh when he claimed that the protesters were merely a group of “trouble makers” who were “causing a ruckus” to get some money from the logging company.
A spokesperson for the communities said that Manyin was lying. The villagers rejected the company’s intrusion, he said, because “our NCR land and our jungle… are our ancestral properties.” Properties that the Bidayuh clearly want to protect.
Agitations such as these are few and far in between, but have occurred in other parts of the world. In 2009, for instance, the Maya reportedly burned equipment at a gold mine in Guatemala; and the Lepcha took action against the Panan hydel power project in Sikkim, India. Similarly, in 2008, the Enawene Nawe completely levelled a hydro dam construction site in Brazil.
Governments and Industry spokespersons tried to dismiss these actions as mere vandalism, as if Indigenous Peoples have nothing better to do than trash private property. But the fact is, with more than 5,000 industrial projects taking place on Indigenous lands around the world, it’s no wonder it doesn’t happen more often.
Especially since the stakes are so high. Companies may offer a few short term jobs and maybe even free bubble gum for the kids, but Indigenous people face the depletion of their water supply, the destruction of their food sources, the loss of their cultural property and the overall devastation of their homelands.
The burden is simply too great for anyone to carry.
anonymous report, from finoallafine.info (translation):
anonymous report, from finoallafine.info (translation):
“Tired of seeing the Earth destroyed, we decided to act. In the night between April 6 and 7 we entered one of the many construction sites in Rome, a city raped by the cement and speculative building that the big manufacturers, with the complicity of the little fascist mayor Alemanno, that are destroying any space that is still wild to construct department stores, malls and parking lots. In this case the work involves the destruction of a very large thicket, with the resulting devastation of the habitat of many animals, birds, insects and mammals. We approached the seven machines (bulldozers and others) that were present; with wire cutters we cut oil tubes, cables and wires, and then we poured gravel and sugar in the tanks and we disappeared leaving a written claim.
This action was taken in solidarity with all who everywhere and at all times struggle against speciesism, anthropocentrism and exploitation, particularly with the defenders of the Russian forests of Khimki and Bitcevski.
Solidarity also with all animal-ecological prisoners, beginning with Walter Bond. For animal liberation, for the liberation of the Earth!”
25.3.11
The construction of the Madeira dams in the Brazilian Amazon has been delayed, following violent protests at the Jirau dam site last week.
Construction workers reportedly set fire to buildings and more than 40 buses at the site, and ransacked shops and cash-points, in protest against low pay and bad working conditions.
The protests brought the dam construction to a stand still.
25.3.11
The construction of the Madeira dams in the Brazilian Amazon has been delayed, following violent protests at the Jirau dam site last week.
Construction workers reportedly set fire to buildings and more than 40 buses at the site, and ransacked shops and cash-points, in protest against low pay and bad working conditions.
The protests brought the dam construction to a stand still.
The Jirau and Santo Antonio dams, part of the Madeira River hydroelectric complex, will damage vast areas of land, upon which numerous tribal peoples depend for their survival. The Indians did not give their consent for the dams to be built.
Domingos Parintintin of the Parintintin tribe said, ‘We hope that the project will be stopped, because it is our children who will suffer the consequences. They will no longer have enough fish or enough game to feed themselves’.
The uncontacted Indians living in the area are extremely vulnerable as they depend completely on their forest, and they have little resistance to outside diseases, which threaten to drive them to extinction.
A report in the Folha de São Paulo, one of Brazil’s biggest newspapers, warned of an ‘explosion of criminality’ in the area, particularly homicide, sexual exploitation and drug trafficking, as the dam construction has attracted thousands of immigrants. More than 37,000 construction workers are reported to be building the two dams.
This huge wave of immigration is putting pressure on the land and increasing the risks faced by the uncontacted Indians.
French company GDF Suez is leading the consortium building the Jirau dam.
anonymous report:
“A group of ELF activists reports a bank firebombed on the night of March the 12th. Windows broken and 4 molotovs (3 litres of gasoline total) thrown inside the office made for a nice and bright firestorm.
anonymous report:
“A group of ELF activists reports a bank firebombed on the night of March the 12th. Windows broken and 4 molotovs (3 litres of gasoline total) thrown inside the office made for a nice and bright firestorm.
Bank we have chosen to attack plays major role in providing financial support for deforestation project in Khimki forest: it loaned out about 29 billion rubles to the contractors responsible for toll highway construction that has already killed acres of forest north of Moscow.
We express tender solidarity with anarchists from Belarus who suffer from state repression for taking an active position against destruction of our forests (they are blamed for a firebombing attempt at russian embassy in Minsk, Belarus). And we call for decentralized actions against Sberbank of Russia, Vinci company and Belarus government offices overseas on March the 15th (or later, never mind the date) on behalf of our belarus comrades.
ELF-Russia”
6 March 2011
anonymous report (translation by This Is Our Job):
6 March 2011
anonymous report (translation by This Is Our Job):
“We, the Earth Liberation Front, take responsibility for the arson at the Mexican Valley Experimental Field in Texcoco, Mexico State. The field belongs to the National Institute of Forestry, Agricultural, and Livestock Research (INIFAP), which is dedicated to the research and development of “improved technology” in the areas of agriculture, animal husbandry, and forest exploitation. For example, INIFAP has been responsible for the production of over 100 new genetic varieties of plants since 2005, greatly increasing the country’s crop production and therefore its demand for land to be deforested and polluted with pesticides and herbicides.
This year, INIFAP opened the National Center for Genetic Resources (CNRG), which is responsible for storing genetic samples of every species endemic to Mexico and Latin America.
The Scientists in this field argue that their project is beneficial to ecosystems, but if we analyze it, these people are really dedicating their lives to the creation of new types of organisms in the name of progress. If we leave such a great variety in their hands, will anything ever be out of their reach? INIFAP also carries out forestry research, which it uses to promote the increased deforestation of wild habitats. For example, two weeks ago INIFAP published an article about the timber industry, an institution that had developed “ecological” (note the quotes) furnaces for drying logs in the mountains north of Puebla. In its article, INIFAP made its hopes clear that these furnaces would lead to growth in the region’s forestry industry, thus threatening an environment in which all kinds of species coexist.
Therefore, we claim the following ecotages inside and outside this federal institution:
1. Leaving an incendiary device—made from three litres of gasoline, fuses for detonation, and air freshening pellets as delays—among hundreds of sacks of herbicide in a warehouse inside their facility.
2. Leaving another incendiary device—fueled by four liters of gasoline—at the entrance to the main building near the experimental field.
3. Leaving two incendiary devices inside two greenhouses outside and behind the facility.
4. Also leaving behind declarative and threatening graffiti—like “THIS TIME IT WAS FIRE, NEXT TIME IT WILL BE BOMBS,” “ELF,” “INIFAP = DESTRUCTION OF WILD NATURE,” “FLT,” “MORE GMOS, MORE FIRE,” among others—on the windows, floor, and walls of the main building; the walls of the other buildings; an INIFAP van; and the power generator.
We’ve struck again. We made use of months of thorough investigation to study the target, taking into account the shifts of the guards, who must have certainly been surprised to find out we were there that morning of February 27—leaping over their security fence, running through their parking lot, and turning our existence into a threatening aggravation to the projects of those who dream of total domestication. We infiltrated the institution itself as well as its fields, where the greenhouses were located. We shifted into action once again, our fire reigniting to damage and destroy the property of those who believe they own the planet on which we survive as the degenerate species of the technological-industrial system.
Keeping our imprisoned anticivilization comrades Adrián and Braulio in mind, we’re absolutely ready to make this type of attack a clear message to industries and institutions that implement technological development.
In another sense, the attack was a symbolic act directed at science and technology. To us, the action may have been of very little or no importance, but it was still necessary, since from our perspective it’s deplorable to sit around like mere passive spectators waiting for things to change. We don’t believe that this action is going to change reality right away, as that would make us either naive or overly pragmatic. But it does function as a desperate act of expression through which we signify that the reality we live in must be negated in its totality, and that the best negation is the destruction of whatever gives meaning to the establishment: “social peace,” normality, institutions, respect for property, etc. In this case, the destruction was directed at one of the major parts of modernity’s system of domination: techno-science. This time, the attack was on a federal government institution responsible for forestry research and biotechnology, among other things. As a pretext for its existence, we’re told that it is seeking a better life for the human beings who live in this country, creating acceptance of this kind of research among the populace. But, as we all know, there are also negative aspects, which to us have greater impact and are more unacceptable and than the benefits: the artificialization and domination of wild nature, especially of potentially free beings including human beings, plus the denial of the necessary autonomy for free human self-determination. On the one hand, the state grants itself the right and the obligation to provide its inhabitants with the means for their survival. On the other hand, the state isn’t even necessary, since it causes alienation whenever its subjects doesn’t find themselves directly immersed in activities that serve to satisfy their survival needs. This leads to numerous psychosocial problems, and of course generates the market as an intermediary, which in turn functions through the standardization of the massive present-day consumption that is deteriorating the environment. This is very much related to the institution we attacked, which attempts to make excuses for continuing its scientific barbarism by creating new technologies—in this case, biotechnologies that claim to solve the problems that science itself causes, fostering the idea that such ecosystem deterioration doesn’t matter as long as we have the science to fix it. Thus, a vicious circle is created that attempts to solve problems with more problems, under the pretence of a “better life.”
Our proposal is to negate the artificial reality that civilization has constructed, not indirectly, but by seeking a way of life that doesn’t involve domination—the most autonomous way of life possible within wild ecosystems and without intermediaries, especially those that are mere deceptions like science and modern dominating technology. Of course, this proposal won’t be accepted by most people, which is fine and even desirable, since among the problems posed by forms of social organization are the dominating structures conceived by mass societies. Therefore, we trust that people who have a truly critical and radical conscience will reflect on the real problems confronting us and act accordingly.
We continue to be the burning rage of a dying planet.
—Earth Liberation Front, Mexico”
