Today, Sep­tem­ber 28th, at 12:00 o’clock, approx­i­mate­ly 60 inter­na­tion­al activists tak­ing part in the Reclaim the Fields camp [1], togeth­er with the local asso­ci­a­tion Albur­nus Maior [2], from Rosia Mon­tana, Roma­nia, occu­pied and blocked the entrance to the Rosia Mon­tana Gold Cor­po­ra­tions [3] head­quar­ters in the vil­lage’s Old Square. This action was in defi­ance of the com­pa­nies con­tin­u­ing attempt to expro­pri­ate locals and destroy an area pro­tect­ed by Roman­ian con­ser­va­tion law.

Local and inter­na­tion­al peo­ple are oppos­ing plans to open Europe’s largest open cast gold mine, which would dis­place hun­dreds of fam­i­lies and result in wide­spread eco­log­i­cal destruc­tion and cyanide con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of the pro­tect­ed land­scape. The peace­ful occu­pa­tion and block­ade last­ed for two hours and the com­pa­ny decid­ed to leave the pub­lic infor­ma­tion point closed for the rest of the day.

The pro­posed mine would destroy the vil­lage of Rosia Mon­tana and intro­duce dan­ger­ous cyanide leach­ing tech­nol­o­gy, threat­en­ing water sys­tems in Roma­nia and beyond with the poten­tial of dev­as­tat­ing acci­dents. Strong local oppo­si­tion to the gold min­ing project emerged almost imme­di­ate­ly in the year 2000 when the project was announced by Cana­di­an com­pa­ny Gabriel Resources. Resis­tance to the plan has since spread across Roma­nia and beyond. Dur­ing the last 10 years, Albur­nus Maior, through the Save Rosia Mon­tana Cam­paign has suc­cess­ful­ly mobi­lized thou­sands of peo­ple and has so far kept the plans from being car­ried out.

The Envi­ron­men­tal Impact Assess­ment pro­ce­dure for the min­ing project was sus­pend­ed in 2008 by the Min­istry of the Envi­ron­ment, due to the dis­cov­ery of ille­gal­i­ties com­mit­ted by the com­pa­ny. Fur­ther­more, civ­il soci­ety has won sev­er­al court cas­es against the Gold Cor­po­ra­tion, where it was proved that the min­ing project was ini­ti­at­ed in ille­gal con­di­tions and involved high lev­els of cor­rup­tion, coer­cion and abuse of the local pop­u­la­tion.

Accord­ing to the law, the min­ing project has to restart from point zero, but the new Roman­ian Envi­ron­ment Min­is­ter wants to pro­ceed with a polit­i­cal deci­sion in favour of the min­ing project, in a clear vio­la­tion of the court deci­sions, as well as of Roman­ian and EU laws on Envi­ron­men­tal Impact Assess­ment pro­ce­dures.

The Roman­ian gov­ern­ment seems keen to sup­port cor­po­rate inter­ests in the face of local oppo­si­tion. A new law on expro­pri­a­tion has been recent­ly pro­posed in the Roman­ian par­lia­ment and is expect­ed to be vot­ed on dur­ing the next month. The law would enable pri­vate com­pa­nies, instead of the Roman­ian state and judi­cial sys­tem, to car­ry out forced expro­pri­a­tion of res­i­dents, in a clear vio­la­tion of human rights.

In dia­logue with the occu­py­ing activists, the com­pa­ny spokesper­son, Catal­in Hosu, reject­ed any rela­tion between the Gold Cor­po­ra­tion and this law and stat­ed that they would not resort to using it if it is passed. In reply, the activists promised to tar­get the cor­po­ra­tion with fur­ther actions if the promise is not kept.

At the EU lev­el, the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion has been refus­ing to fol­low up on a May 2010 Euro­pean Par­lia­ment res­o­lu­tion requir­ing it to make a leg­isla­tive pro­pos­al to ban the use of cyanide in min­ing. While the Gold Cor­po­ra­tion has expressed the inten­tion to adopt cyanide reduc­tion tech­nol­o­gy in Rosia Mon­tana, recent news exposed that the use of such tech­nol­o­gy will be much more expen­sive than orig­i­nal­ly planned [4]. In response to this, Catal­in Hosu replied that the Gold Cor­po­ra­tion is com­mit­ted to respect all Roman­ian and EU leg­is­la­tion, but did not state whether this tech­nol­o­gy will be adopt­ed or dropped in face of the costs.

NOTES:

[1] The Reclaim the Fields move­ment (www.reclaimthefields.org) brings togeth­er food grow­ers and farm­ers around Europe that are con­nect­ing local prac­ti­cal action with glob­al polit­i­cal strug­gles. Reclaim the Fields stands against cor­po­rate inter­ests and any projects which reduce the access and right to land for food pro­duc­tion, abuse local com­mu­ni­ties and destroy cul­tur­al and envi­ron­men­tal val­ues. Between 21–30 of Sep­tem­ber, 2011, sev­er­al hun­dred activists from all over Europe and Roma­nia are par­tic­i­pat­ing in an unprece­dent­ed sol­i­dar­i­ty camp in Rosia Mon­tana – Roma­nia. The event is orga­nized by Reclaim the Fields togeth­er with the Albur­nus Maior Asso­ci­a­tion (www.rosiamontana.org), with strong sup­port from the Roman­ian peas­ant asso­ci­a­tion Eco Ruralis (www.ecoruralis.ro) and numer­ous orga­ni­za­tions and indi­vid­u­als from across geo­graph­i­cal Europe.

[2] Albur­nus Maior asso­ci­a­tion rep­re­sents the local oppo­si­tion from Rosia Mon­tana against the largest gold mine pro­pos­al in Europe which entails the destruc­tion of Rosia Mon­tana and a large area of the Apuseni Moun­tains in Roma­nia. www.rosiamontana.org

[3] Rosia Mon­tana Gold Cor­po­ra­tion is 19.31 per­cent owned by the Roman­ian state with the remain­ing share­hold­ers includ­ing Gabriel Resources, New­mont and Bar­rick Gold.

[4] AFP, Low­er cyanide lev­el in Roman­ian gold mine to cost mil­lions, 23.09.2011, http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hXIMBYPJT-sYBLCZhIWJfy-sp_oQ?docId=CNG.eca6a9ad91bdb5676908fa2ea3090890.e1

“I’ll nev­er purge my con­tempt, and I want the ESB stopped. I most cer­tain­ly do!” — mes­sage from Tere­sa Trea­cy, 65 years old, in Moun­tjoy Wom­ens’ Prison.

On Wednes­day the 14th of Sep­tem­ber, con­cerned indi­vid­u­als wish­ing to sup­port Tere­sa Trea­cy arrived at Clon­more, Tul­lam­ore. The fol­low­ing morn­ing the sup­port­ers learned that no tree felling would be car­ried out that week and ESB work­ers had been instruct­ed to leave the site.

On the morn­ing of Sat­ur­day the 17th of Sep­tem­ber, Tere­sa rang from the prison to say that her spir­its had been lift­ed by the news. She has her own cell in the prison thanks to the good graces of the prison staff. After her ini­tial shock she is set­tling in. She said she has no inten­tion of ‘purg­ing her con­tempt’ and is call­ing out for sup­port.

It is the ESB’s intent to fell trees cov­er­ing a total 12 acres of land and amount­ing to 12,000 trees in all, many of which are native species and were hand plant­ed and main­tained by Tere­sa over the years. The end result being a 50m wide cor­ri­dor per­ma­nent­ly sev­er­ing her wood­lands in two for well over one kilo­me­ter. It is the inten­tion of the ESB to fill the felling zone with one 20 metre high met­al tow­er, five dou­ble wood­en poles, a 110Kv sin­gle trans­mis­sion line, and five con­tin­u­ous wires.

Tere­sa has been attempt­ing to nego­ti­ate with the ESB since 2006. She has reluc­tant­ly offered a com­pro­mise of sit­ing the line under­ground to no avail. Hav­ing spent her entire life as a law-abid­ing cit­i­zen, she has tak­en the path of peace­ful direct resis­tance as a course of last resort.

In a call from the prison, Tere­sa has asked for sup­port­ers to become active­ly involved in her strug­gle to pro­tect her land and trees. Tere­sa is com­mit­ted and remains defi­ant. She has no inten­tion of ‘purg­ing her con­tempt’.

Let­ters of sup­port can be sent to: Tere­sa Treacy/ Dochas/ Mon­thjoy Wom­ens’ Prison/ North Cir­cu­lar RD/ Dublin 7/ Eire

To become involved, call Niall on 086 8444966.

For MEDIA, email Sean Ryan at: 2seanryan2@gmail.com
__________________________________________________________

Notes to Edi­tors

1. Both mag­net­ic fields and elec­tri­cal fields are sep­a­rate enti­ties with regard to the health ques­tion, even though they often may well work togeth­er to cause the risks.

2. A lot of argu­ments asso­ci­at­ed with mag­net­ic field expo­sure are
con­tra­dict­ed by the fact that peo­ple who work in this par­tic­u­lar area don’t seem to suf­fer from many of the ill­ness­es asso­ci­at­ed with these fields. The counter argu­ment advances that this is because the brain secretes par­tic­u­lar secre­tions when a per­son is asleep that are not secret­ed when one is awake. Most folks who work in this area are assumed not to be asleep on the job!

3. Mag­net­ic fields can strip radioac­tive par­ti­cles from the atmos­phere and con­cen­trate them in the areas around over­head lines.

4. Elec­tri­cal fields asso­ci­at­ed with high volt­age cre­ate a coro­na that can ionise a very large area (mea­sured in kilo­me­tres) around the con­duc­tors. The body is a con­duc­tor and radioac­tive par­ti­cles can actu­al­ly stick to the body due to this effect.

The fol­low­ing are asso­ci­at­ed with high volt­age over­head lines:
Depression/suicide, child­hood leukaemia, skin can­cer, lung can­cer,
mis­car­riages and many more.

More infor­ma­tion here
http://www.feb.se/emfguru/Elf/calif-power.html
http://www.feb.se/emfguru/Elf/elf-contents.html

—

Tere­sa Trea­cy Ordered to Jail over ESB Pow­er­lines

“You picked the wrong place here” — Tere­sa Trea­cy to ESB con­sul­tant Shane McLough­ney, April 2007.

ere­sa Trea­cy, a 65 year old woman from Tul­lam­ore, Co Offaly has been ordered to jail by High Court Judge Daniel Her­bert at the request of the ESB.

Ms Trea­cy, who shares the fam­i­ly farm with her sis­ter Mary at Wood­field House, Clon­more, Tul­lam­ore, Co Offaly has refused the ESB access to her lands in order to pro­tect the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment and the native trees that she has man­aged there for many years.

In Feb­ru­ary 2006 the ESB began plans to con­struct a 110kV trans­mis­sion pow­er­line from Cushal­ing to Thorns­bury. The plans spec­i­fy that dou­ble wood­pole struc­tures and steel tow­ers accom­mo­dat­ing over­head pow­er­lines be built at 200 metre inter­vals over a total dis­tance of 32 kilo­me­tres through the lands of local landown­ers.

Ms Trea­cy out­lined her objec­tions in a num­ber of let­ters to the ESB and arranged a num­ber of meet­ings with them to request that the pow­er­lines be con­struct­ed under­ground for the fol­low­ing rea­sons.

1) The Health & Safe­ty risks, includ­ing can­cer risks which are increas­ing­ly asso­ci­at­ed with over­head pow­er­lines as a result of Elec­tro Mag­net­ic Fields (EMF).

2) The fact that she has always main­tained and improved her land as a nat­ur­al habi­tat which includes native trees, old and new, cared for and/or plant­ed by her­self for future gen­er­a­tions as a sus­tain­able nat­ur­al resource, through which the ESB want to smash.

3) The fact that the under­ground­ing of pow­er­lines is now con­sid­ered to be best prac­tice across Europe. Ire­land and the ESB are at the bot­tom of the league in terms of catch­ing up with inter­na­tion­al stan­dards and the progress which has been made to ensure that under­ground pow­er­lines are the pro­gres­sive way for­ward.

The ESB were also point­ed to a recent deci­sion in 2006 to under­ground the Bantry (Colo­mane — Bal­lylick­ey) 38kV pow­er­line, which arose out of intense local protest oppos­ing the over­ground­ing of that line. The ESB were con­tract­ed to that project by a pri­vate wind­farm devel­op­er who suc­ceed­ed in get­ting injunc­tions against local farm­ers but decid­ed not to enforce them. He aban­doned over­ground­ing in favour of under­ground­ing the pow­er­line. See here: http://www.indymedia.ie/article/77007

When the Cushal­ing – Thorns­bury project was pro­posed for Tul­lam­ore in ear­ly 2006 it appeared that there was stiff oppo­si­tion to the project among the affect­ed 90 landown­ers in Offaly. Under­ground­ing options were dis­cussed as tech­ni­cal pos­si­bil­i­ties and Euro­pean best prac­tice had come to the atten­tion of the pub­lic.

It’s one thing to have a pri­vate devel­op­er opt for under­ground­ing but the ESB, fear­ing that a prece­dent may be set, were clever enough to use the Irish Farm­ers Asso­ci­a­tion (IFA) to nego­ti­ate a com­pen­sa­tion pack­age with the landown­ers, most of them farm­ers.

Tere­sa Trea­cy stood to gain up to approx­i­mate­ly 150,000 euro in 3 staged pay­ments if she agreed to the project and on con­di­tion that no legal costs were incurred by the ESB if they had to go to court, in which case the last 2 pay­ments would be ‘for­feit­ed’.

This deal, nego­ti­at­ed by the IFA over the course of 2 years, seemed to appease most of the landown­ers so by the time a pub­lic meet­ing was called to organ­ise the landown­ers, by Ms Trea­cy in March 2009, less than a dozen peo­ple showed up.

By the sum­mer of 2011 Tere­sa Trea­cy was the only one refus­ing access to the ESB.

The ESB has made a num­ber of appli­ca­tions to the High Court over the sum­mer, includ­ing orders for Ms Trea­cy to unlock her gates and let them in and sub­se­quent­ly an order empow­er­ing the ESB to break the locks after Ms Trea­cy refused to obey the first order. The ESB told the court that Ms Trea­cy “has an emo­tion­al attach­ment to her trees”. When Ms Trea­cy obstruct­ed them from break­ing the locks the ESB decid­ed to go back to court to issue con­tempt pro­ceed­ings against Ms Trea­cy.

Today, Mon­day 12th Sep­tem­ber 2011, Judge Daniel Her­bert told Ms Trea­cy that he had no choice but to uphold the law and ordered that she be jailed for con­tempt of the court orders.

“I’m beg­ging them for years” said Ms Trea­cy today. “5½ years, what a waste of time it was try­ing to talk to them”. Fac­ing jail she said “I feel good, I real­ly do. I just could­n’t let them in to do that. It’s just not right”.

“The route is cut­ting through our for­est and the old Whitethorn hedgerows. For over 25 years I have used all my time and ener­gy get­ting our lands into a place of nat­ur­al beau­ty and overnight it can be destroyed with high pow­ered lines going through forests beside the old bridge, the old laneway and through the new Oak and Ash woods I plant­ed over 20 years ago. I have spent many years replac­ing dead trees and cut­ting gorse with my hands. I filled con­tain­ers with water from the riv­er so that my for­est is a mod­el. All my trees have been pruned indi­vid­u­al­ly by me to pro­mote their growth”

“My heart is bro­ken by the thought that they may be uproot­ed and thrown away. I know I will nev­er see them in their full glo­ry but was sat­is­fied know­ing that oth­ers would enjoy them long into the future”

“We already have 10 ESB poles on our land and feel that we have already done enough for the com­mon good. Our farm is our life’s blood, its scenic beau­ty from the untouched fields to the riv­er and through the bog, all of it nat­ur­al flo­ra and fau­na”.

Ear­li­er court pro­ceed­ings were heard by Judge Mary Laf­foy who grant­ed orders to the ESB. I’m won­der­ing did Judge Laf­foy decide not to be avail­able to the ESB to hear con­tempt pro­ceed­ings. Who would want to send an elder­ly woman to jail in these cir­cum­stances? When judge­ments are made in the High Court they are usu­al­ly pre­sent­ed as ’ … the High Court has ruled such a way …’, and the name of the judge is under­stood to be irrel­e­vant for the pur­pos­es of law. A judge is sim­ply an instru­ment of the law and the law must be applied regard­less of the per­son­al­i­ty or opin­ion of the judge. It is legal­ly cor­rect for a judge to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for ‘dif­fi­cult cas­es’ because that’s their job, and regard­less of good rea­son, and the 3 rea­sons out­lined above, the law must be applied, must­n’t it?!

Ms Trea­cy will remain in jail until she ‘purges her con­tempt’ by agree­ing to com­ply with the court orders. The ESB, how­ev­er, are in a posi­tion to make an appli­ca­tion to the court for her release, but this is unlike­ly, at least until they’ve smashed the trees and con­struct­ed their out­dat­ed pow­er­lines. Her incar­cer­a­tion is in their hands.

Bury the pow­er­lines, not the peo­ple!