Whats going on in Mayo? Rossport Update

Overview of the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty cam­paign in the last few months: the Soli­taire, actions, on-land sec­tion, arrests, assaults, strat­e­gy, plan­ning appeal, mobil­is­ing and more!

What’s going on in mayo?!

The last few months have been dif­fi­cult times for the Ross­port cam­paign but have also seen some great col­lab­o­ra­tions with activists from across Ire­land, inter­na­tion­als and the local com­mu­ni­ty.

This sum­mer the Soli­taire laid the first sec­tion of pipe in Broad­haven Bay. Dredgers are in the process of back fill­ing the first sec­tion of the pipeline, com­ing and going from the bay depend­ing on weath­er con­di­tions.… IRMS, the pri­vate secu­ri­ty firm employed by Shell, con­tin­ue to tar­get and assault pro­tes­tors. Ear­li­er this year they sunk the boat of local fish­er­man Pat O’Don­nell, one of the ‘Ross­port 5’ and attacked Willie Cor­duff, anoth­er cam­paign­er, dur­ing a non-vio­lent protest. Both were hos­pi­talised.

Sev­er­al inter­na­tion­al anti-Shell cam­paign­ers were recent­ly remand­ed for a block­ade and bailed away from Mayo. This is a wor­ry­ing devel­op­ment enforced by cor­rupt judges col­lud­ing with Shell. Mau­ra Har­ring­ton, and Niall Har­nett, both well known Shell to Sea cam­paign­ers were both giv­en 4 and 8 months respec­tive­ly, after refus­ing to com­ply with a good behav­iour bond which stat­ed that they would keep the peace, and stay away from any Shell relat­ed infra­struc­ture.

Mau­ra appealed her con­vic­tion, and was released from prison on bail pend­ing appeal. Niall served 15 days in Castlerea prison for refus­ing his extreme­ly restric­tive bail con­di­tions, which effec­tive­ly stopped him from being in his home. He is now out on bail.

In the last two weeks alone there have been 2 acci­dents involv­ing Shells boats, one caus­ing an oil spill, anoth­er dam­ag­ing a sup­ply ship to the pipeline. Accord­ing to Shell nei­ther had any envi­ron­men­tal impact, despite sub­stances leak­ing into the sea. This fur­ther proves the mock­ery that is the risk assess­ments on the envi­ron­men­tal impacts that they are con­duct­ing.

Despite the suc­cess of the Soli­taire and pres­sure from the gar­dai and IRMS the fight is by no means over!! In August the oral hear­ing was held where Shell sought to obtain a com­pul­so­ry pur­chase order for land need­ed across the bay to lay the on-shore pipe section…and the deci­sion has been put back till the end of Octo­ber.

Resis­tance in Glen­gad is still strong, with plans for the next phase in the bat­tle against Shell.…with the on-shore sec­tion comes a new wave of chal­lenges (and oppor­tu­ni­ties) for cam­paign­ers fight­ing to stop the pipeline… We will be con­tin­u­ing to chal­lenge Shel­l’s intim­i­da­tion tac­tics in order to stop this ille­gal, unsafe, and envi­ron­men­tal­ly cat­a­stroph­ic project. The sit­u­a­tion in Ross­port is a line in the sand for new meth­ods of intim­i­da­tion, human rights abus­es, and envi­ron­men­tal­ly dis­as­trous gas extrac­tion and must be stopped. Inter­na­tion­al links in the cam­paign have been devel­op­ing over years, espe­cial­ly with the Ogo­ni tribe in Nige­ria where Shel­l’s tac­tics have caused many human­i­tar­i­an crises, and famous­ly led to a tri­al against Shell for the mur­der of Ken Saro-Wiwa. Most recent­ly the Shell guilty cam­paign will see a col­lab­o­ra­tion between activists from across the globe fight­ing to stop Shell.

On camp and up at the house we are doing main­te­nance work on the boats, gar­den and equip­ment, and peo­ple are always very wel­come! The Irish Shell to Sea net­work is mobil­is­ing peo­ple ahead of the next sec­tion of the cam­paign, organ­is­ing actions and demos, and devel­op­ing strate­gies for action… in the UK there’s loads that can be done: organ­is­ing film nights, ben­e­fit gigs, tak­ing action in your local area against Shell and the oth­er com­pa­nies prof­it­ing from the pipeline, and mobil­is­ing ahead of the next phase. With peo­ple being bailed away from Mayo, it’s more impor­tant than ever to have peo­ple com­ing to take action against Shell!

To find out more keep an eye out for work­shops at the EF gath­er­ing, Cli­mate Cam­p’s and fes­ti­vals across the UK..

The strug­gle con­tin­ues!

For more infor­ma­tion see
www.rossportsolidaritycamp.110mb.com

www.corribsos.com

www.shellguilty.com

or email rossportsolidaritycamp@gmail.com