GM fields squatted in Germany (& Portuguese update)

Two GM fields squat­ted in Ger­many
The past cou­ple of weeks saw two suc­cess­ful field squats in Ger­many pre­vent­ing the sow­ing of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied crops.
On 31 March a pro­posed gm bar­ley field tri­al by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Gießen was squat­ted.. Activists squat­ted the field before the sow­ing of the crop. They erect­ed a tri­pod made out of three lengths of wood plus a con­crete lock-on dug into the ground and set up a tent camp. To date the field is still squat­ted with num­bers grow­ing all the time. There is grow­ing local sup­port for the action, espe­cial­ly amongst farm­ers. This action has fol­lowed sev­er­al suc­cess­ful „field lib­er­a­tions“ over the past years, where anti-GM cam­paign­ers destroyed the GM crops plant­ed by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Gießen. Sat­ur­day the 5th April saw hun­dreds of peo­ple and three trac­tors demon­strate in the city of Gießen for the can­cel­la­tion of the tri­al.
On 4 April a sec­ond field was squat­ted in Ober­boi­hin­gen in South Ger­many, des­ig­nat­ed for a tri­al of GM maize by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Nürtin­gen. Here anoth­er 30 feet tri­pod was erect­ed and activists pre­pared to sit it out for sev­er­al weeks.The tri­pod was soon joined by a cir­cus tent, and a peo­ple’s kitchen. Farm­ers brought straw for the mud­dy field and local sup­port­ers swamped the kitchen with food. Con­certs and talks were run­ning in the cir­cus tent. The first day start­ed with 20 peo­ple on the field, by the end of the first day there were already 50 peo­ple. Just five days lat­er the Uni­ver­si­ty saw sense and can­celled the tri­al! Ober­boi­hin­gen was also the tar­get of field lib­er­a­tions in the past years, in 2006 a bee­keep­er open­ly destroyed 3 plants in a pub­lic act of resis­tance.

These actions are part of the vibrant resis­tance against GM crops in Ger­many. Over the past few years Ger­many has seen a mas­sive growth in GM crop tri­als and com­mer­cial Gm grow­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly Mon­san­to maize. This has kicked off a huge pub­lic out­cry with many peo­ple resort­ing to direct action includ­ing the large scale decon­t­a­m­i­na­tion of GM fields by day and night. Direct action group Gen-dreck Weg! (GM filth – away with it!) has already announced anoth­er large scale open field lib­er­a­tion for this sum­mer, where hun­dreds of peo­ple are plan­ning to rip up GM maize.

http://www.gendreck-weg.de/

—–

Por­tuguese Judi­cial Police clas­si­fies action against genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied corn as a “ter­ror­ist” act in Europol report

In the last “EU ter­ror­ism sit­u­a­tion and trend report” of Europol, the par­tial mow­ing of a field in Silves (Por­tu­gal), last sum­mer, is clas­si­fied as a ter­ror­ist act. In France, Ger­many and the UK, sim­i­lar actions are often far more rad­i­cal and hap­pen reg­u­lar­ly. Yet, they are not clas­si­fied as ter­ror­ist acts in the report. Cur­rent­ly, in Ger­many an occu­pa­tion of exper­i­men­tal GM fields is tak­ing place.

The Por­tuguese radio sta­tion ‘Radio Clube’ was the first to report on the Europol doc­u­ment. But even the lawyer of the accus­ing par­ty declared that he could not see any ele­ments that would jus­ti­fy to label the destruc­tion of the GM field of his client as ‘ter­ror­ist’. A spe­cial­ist in penal law also declared he could not estab­lish any rela­tion between the action in Silves and ter­ror­ist acts.

It is becom­ing obvi­ous that the Por­tuguese gov­ern­ment is grab­bing all oppor­tu­ni­ties to crush oppo­si­tion against GM crops, by clas­si­fy­ing a non-vio­lent polit­i­cal action as an act of ter­ror­ism. They had this oppor­tu­ni­ty here because the Europol report is writ­ten based on the con­tri­bu­tions of the rel­e­vant author­i­ties of each EU mem­ber state. When a democ­ra­cy is weak, police, in this case judi­cial police can afford to spread this kind of non­sense in an offi­cial report. And it does not only affect the ones involved in this par­tic­u­lar case, but it oppress­es every­one strug­gling for a bet­ter world, with­out GMOs.