Swedish anti-mining protest camp against Beowulf Mining

Right now there is a bat­tle to save Sáp­mi (occu­pied by Swe­den) from more mines. Sáp­mi has already been exploit­ed and col­o­nized by the Swedish state and cor­po­ra­tions for gen­er­a­tions. Now an entire­ly new area is under attack from the min­ing indus­try, the forests, moun­tains and lakes west of Jokkmokk are threat­ened.

Since a month there is a block­ade against british Beowulf Mining´s test min­ing project in Gál­lok (swe: #kallak) going on. Activists have joined togeth­er with indige­nous Sami peo­ple to save the place from a big iron mine. The 29th of July the swedish police came and tore down the first block­ade and arrest­ed 6 per­sons. The same night the block­ade was raised again, with improve­ments to the company´s great dis­ap­point­ment. The activists plan to stay for the win­ter when the rein­deer and herders come and legal­ly can stop the test min­ing.

Resis­tance against the planned mine is grow­ing while the swedish police have said they are doing what the min­ing cor­po­ra­tion orders them to. Beowulf is cur­rent­ly silent and prob­a­bly don’t want more bad expo­sure and might try to beat the activists in the wait­ing game. Mean­while more peo­ple join the protests in dif­fer­ent ways through art and music as well as sup­port­ing the grow­ing protest camp. The activists are now build­ing Pen­ta­gon, a house sup­posed to work to decol­o­nize the world.

Update: The sec­ond bar­ri­cade was also destroyed by the cops the 12th of August and a secu­ri­ty guard­ing com­pa­ny is hired to pro­tect the test­mines and the road from pro­test­ers. This only to do test min­ing.

More recent update: Yes­ter­day they start­ed blast­ing, with 4 peo­ple near by in trees not out­side the blast­ing safe­ty zone. pigs removed bar­ri­cades in the morn­ing. many peo­ple got pulled off the road and chased from the for­est. 8 peo­ple were arrest­ed. last night and again tonight the road is bar­ri­cad­ed to delay work. now 10 secu­ri­ty work­ers work 12hr shifts, day and night. our spir­its are high. the bat­tle con­tin­ues.

http://kolonierna.wordpress.com/ for more info, pic­tures and videos.