Son of Shell to Sea hunger striker assaulted and arrested at Glengad beach

13.09.2008
Today at mid­day around 50 local and nation­al Shell to Sea cam­paign­ers attempt­ed to reclaim Glen­gad beach, Spe­cial Area of Con­ser­va­tion, from Shell. Despite Shel­l’s com­mit­ment to allow pub­lic access to the beach, for the past two months the beach has been closed to the pub­lic while prepara­to­ry pipeline work is ongo­ing.

When cam­paign­ers attempt­ed to exer­cise their right to pub­lic access to the beach they were met by Gar­da vio­lence. Four peo­ple were arrest­ed, includ­ing hunger strik­er Mau­ra Har­ringot­n’s son. Ms. Har­ring­ton’s son was treat­ed par­tic­u­lar­ly bru­tal­ly by the Gar­dai. Four Gar­dai knelt on his back, pushed his face into the sand for sev­er­al min­utes and twist­ed his arms behind his back.

One wit­ness to the arrests stat­ed, “There were over 50 peo­ple par­tic­i­pat­ing in the demon­stra­tion and out of all these the Gar­dai clear­ly sin­gled out Mau­ra Har­ring­ton’s son. They called him by name and then assault­ed him. It was no co inci­dence that it was Mau­ra’s son that was so vio­lent­ly arrest­ed.”

All who were arrest­ed are cur­rent­ly being held in Bel­mul­let Gar­da sta­tion.

At the time of writ­ing Mau­ra Har­ring­ton, Shell to Sea, is into her fifth day of a hunger strike which she began on Tue 9th August at approx­i­mate­ly 6pm when Shel­l’s pipe-lay­ing ship the Soli­taire arrived in Broad­haven Bay, Erris, Co Mayo.

Mau­ra is clear that her hunger strike will end in one of two ways.

1) Writ­ten con­fir­ma­tion that the Soli­taire has left Irish ter­ri­to­r­i­al waters.
2) Her death.