Tara Vigil Camp Being Evicted

May 08, 2008; 10:30 am
HELP NEEDED NOW

About a half an hour ago 20 Gar­dai, 20 OPW and 10–15 MD Secu­ri­ty descend­ed on the Hill to evict the Vig­il Camp.

2 Loader lor­ries and 12 oth­er vehi­cles are cur­rent­ly there . The Tem­ple struc­ture has been dis­man­tled, chopped into pieces and removed. They are now dis­man­tling the A Chairde hut and the Tipi. The sev­en Vig­il Keep­ers on site were not giv­en time to remove their per­son­al items and there is no chan­nel of com­mu­ni­ca­tion open as the work­ers turn their backs. There is no nego­ti­a­tion.

The OPW Archae­ol­o­gist said that she would PERSONALLY put out the fire. She is refer­ring to the Vig­il Fire that has been burn­ing for the Val­ley since Sum­mer Sol­stice June 06.

URGENT

Phone cred­it is urgent­ly need­ed on the Vig­il phone. Also urgent is the need for cam­eras and wit­ness­es to doc­u­ment this. Please do what­ev­er you can NOW. Send cred­it, bring help.

VIGIL PH: 086 1758557
Relat­ed Link: http://www.tarapixie.net

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Vig­il keeps have man­aged to get some time.

The Gar­dai were not able to quote specif­i­cal­ly any law that would allow them to estin­guish the sacred fire, they have giv­en them a days grace to cer­e­mo­nous­ly remove the fire, but as it is specif­i­cal­ly the Hill of Tara sacred fire, it would have to be moved to anoth­er site on Tara!!!!! This in itself cre­ates a conun­drum.

No method state­ment has been pro­vid­ed.
Peo­ple are now allowed to remove per­son­al pos­ses­sions.
A recog­nised Fer­rovial employ­ee was assist­ing, but was wear­ing MD Secu­ri­ty cloth­ing. THIS IT OBVIOUSLY OUTRAGIOUS.

There is approx 20 vig­il keep­ers suround­ing the Tem­ple Ti-Pi/­Fire adamant that they have the right to con­tin­ue hold­ing the Vig­il.
There is a good atmos­phere, music + drums, kids and laugh­ter.
Ener­gy is high and spir­its are pos­i­tive.

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3pm update:

The OPW did not pro­duce any paper­work for this evic­tion. Noth­ing signed and dat­ed by a Judge.

The Pro­tec­tors are cur­rent­ly blockad­ing their vehi­cles and not allow­ing them to LEAVE the site. Short­ly after this hap­pened, the OPW agreed to nego­ti­a­tions and are now at a meet­ing with mem­bers of the Vig­il.

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Vig­il Press Release

Press Release on behalf of the Tara Sol­i­dar­i­ty Vig­il Camp
8th May 2008
At approx 10:30 this morn­ing, the Office of Pub­lic Works launched an evic­tion attempt on the Tara Sol­i­dar­i­ty Vig­il Camp, which is in situ on pub­lic land.

The Vig­il is “a non-hier­ar­chi­cal peo­ples’ sol­i­dar­i­ty vig­il, here in sup­port of local peo­ple and all indi­vid­u­als and groups in the cam­paigns to Save Tara. We are adamant in our non-affil­i­a­tion with any par­tic­u­lar polit­i­cal or reli­gious par­ties but wel­come any friends of Tara to the sacred Vig­il Fire, which has been burn­ing con­tin­u­ous­ly since the Sum­mer Sol­stice, 21st of June 2006”.

This morn­ing, 20 OPW employ­ees, up to 15 MD Secu­ri­ty Work­ers and 20 Gar­daí entered the camp and began to dis­man­tle tem­po­rary struc­tures which are used dai­ly by the Vig­il Keep­ers. The struc­tures include a Tem­ple, sev­er­al dwellings and meet­ing huts. The Tem­ple, which was made of wood, was des­e­crat­ed by chain­saw as the Keep­ers looked on in shock. Their pri­or­i­ty was to hold their ground pro­tect­ing the sacred flame with­in the Vig­il TiPi. To add insult to injury, hid­den with­in the group of MD Secu­ri­ty work­ers, wear­ing their logo was a known Fer­rovial employ­ee.

Fer­rovial Agro­man, a Span­ish com­pa­ny, are one of the com­pa­nies, in con­junc­tion with SIAC, who are con­tract­ed to build the con­tro­ver­sial M3 motor­way. This begs to fur­ther ques­tion the repeat­ed coop­er­a­tion between the Gar­daí and pri­vate secu­ri­ty for SIAC/ Fer­rovial Agro­man, on the back of the demo­li­tion of the Direct Action Protest Camp at Rath Lugh on 17th Apr2008.

The OPW Archae­ol­o­gist onsite stat­ed, and has been record­ed that she would “per­son­al­ly put out the fire”. Both the OPW onsite and the Gar­daí were ini­tial­ly refus­ing to acknowl­edge the sacred­ness of the fire and in doing so are not uphold­ing an individual’s right to reli­gious worship/practice. The OPW have also admit­ted on cam­era that this was not an offi­cial evic­tion, and that they didn’t even have the offi­cial doc­u­men­ta­tion or method state­ment to car­ry out the activ­i­ty.

When nego­ti­a­tions were final­ly pos­si­ble, the Gar­daí were not able to quote specif­i­cal­ly any law that would allow them to extin­guish this sacred fire. Talks since have pro­duce a guar­an­tee from Ms Fion­nu­la Par­nell, Archae­ol­o­gist from the Nation­al Mon­u­ments Depart­ment OPW, in the pres­ence of a Gar­dai, that no attempt to remove the fire, or the TiPi hous­ing it until the out­come of an agreed meet­ing on 19th May 2007. There are approx 30 vig­il keep­ers sur­round­ing the TiPi hous­ing the fire adamant that they have the right to con­tin­ue hold­ing the Vig­il and prac­tice their indi­vid­ual and col­lec­tive beliefs. Sev­er­al of these peo­ple were assault­ed by the pri­vate­ly hired secu­ri­ty com­pa­ny in the pres­ence of Gar­dai, and will be fil­ing charges. Oth­er­wise, there is a great atmos­phere, music + drums, children’s laugh­ter in the air. Ener­gy is pos­i­tive and spir­its are high in the Sum­mer sun. This is why the Vig­il has attract­ed vis­i­tors from the 4 cor­ners of the world in the 23months of it’s exis­tence.

Ex-Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has in the past fore­warned of dan­ger­ous trends in mod­ern soci­ety “So much of what is hap­pen­ing with­in our soci­ety and in the wider world is bound up with ques­tions of reli­gion, reli­gious iden­ti­ty and reli­gious belief,” he said, “that gov­ern­ments which refuse or fail to engage with reli­gious com­mu­ni­ties and reli­gious iden­ti­ties risk fail­ing in their fun­da­men­tal duties to their cit­i­zens.” The Irish Con­sti­tu­tion (Arti­cle 8) recog­nis­es that cit­i­zens have a right to “Free­dom of con­science and the free pro­fes­sion and prac­tice of reli­gion are, sub­ject to pub­lic order and moral­i­ty, guar­an­teed to every cit­i­zen, and no law may be made either direct­ly or indi­rect­ly to endow any reli­gion or pro­hib­it or restrict the free exer­cise there­of or give any pref­er­ence, or impose any dis­abil­i­ty on account of reli­gious belief or reli­gious sta­tus”. The Euro­pean Con­sti­tu­tion (Part II — The Char­ter of Fun­da­men­tal Rights of the Union) Arti­cle II-70 recog­nis­es ”Free­dom of thought, con­science and reli­gion: 1) Every­one has the right to free­dom of thought, con­science and reli­gion. This right includes free­dom to change reli­gion or belief and free­dom, either alone or in com­mu­ni­ty with oth­ers and in pub­lic or in pri­vate, to man­i­fest reli­gion or belief, in wor­ship, teach­ing, prac­tice and obser­vance”.

We, the Vig­il Keep­ers, call on Min­is­ter John Gorm­ley, as Min­is­ter of the Depart­ment of the Envi­ron­ment, Her­itage and Local Gov­ern­ment respon­si­ble for State Man­aged Vis­i­tor Ser­vices, to offi­cial­ly acknowl­edge the sacred Vig­il Fire on the Hill of Tara.

For ver­i­fi­ca­tion call Deb­bie Reil­ly on 086 175 8557

Issued on behalf of the Tara Sol­i­dar­i­ty Vig­il
Joanne Cor­bett 086 6030389 www.savetara.com