Shell Deliveries Halted by Road Protest

Tues­day 25th Octo­ber at 8am, peo­ple gath­ered for what has become the week­ly local protest at gate one of Shel­l’s refin­ery. After some tea and scones, peo­ple decid­ed to stop a Shell truck. For about 30 min­utes peo­ple stood in front of the truck with­out has­sle, let­ting traf­fic pass on the oth­er side of the road. Even­tu­al­ly the Gar­daí removed peo­ple, in some cas­es being quite rough. One per­son was pinned to the ground for 5–10 min­utes, immo­bilised. Oth­er peo­ple were thrown off the road into ditch­es. The Gar­daí did not hold back against one elder­ly pro­test­er who is almost 80, throw­ing him around with­out a sec­ond thought. After 10 or 15 min­utes of peo­ple get­ting pulled off the road by guards, the truck inch­ing for­ward as more peo­ple got in front of it and then once again get pulled off the road in a con­tin­u­ous rolling block­ade, one per­son got up on top of the truck. She said she would­n’t have done this except that she was sick of see­ing peo­ple get­ting thrown around on the road and she knew get­ting on top of the vehi­cle would defuse the sit­u­a­tion by halt­ing things until she either came down her­self or could be removed Gar­daí. After stay­ing up on top of the truck for about 30 min­utes, the pro­test­er climbed down and then was arrest­ed, brought to Bel­mul­let Gar­da sta­tion and released with­out charge lat­er that day. Shell are sched­uled to begin remov­ing peat from the Augh­oose tun­nelling com­pound at the end of Octo­ber or ear­ly Novem­ber, which will mean hun­dreds of truck move­ments a day. Come up any­time and sup­port the actions, or sim­ply to vis­it the area and see for your­self what is going on. The Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp is open to vis­i­tors and is locat­ed in a field in Augh­oose, between Bel­lan­aboy and Pul­lath­omas. This Hal­loween week­end the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp is host­ing a week­end of direct action train­ing work­shops. Also there will be a Day of Sol­i­dar­i­ty on the 11th of Novem­ber 2011, at the Augh­oose com­pound. It will mark 5 years since the baton charge on pro­tes­tors at Bel­lan­aboy. Please come and offer your sol­i­dar­i­ty to the com­mu­ni­ty who have been protest­ing against the Cor­rib Gas project. To con­tact the camp, ring 085 114 1170 or email rossportsolidaritycamp[at]gmail[dot]com

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