How to stop a nuclear waste train. impressions from Germany

from various sources, 14 November 2008:

Good news: 20,000 police trying to prevent countless anti-nuclear waste activists from stopping the castor transport train weren´t able to stop them: a couple of activists managed to stop the train not far away from the french border by chaining themselves to the rails. The following is a portrait of a very famous and traditional event within the anti-Castor activist's agenda: the forest „game“ called the „Ralley Monte Göhrde“.

It began today, Friday 7th November at 14.30 with several thousand people participating in creative actions. Activists get virtual „credits“ for outcomes such as: building barricades, crossing the Castor railway (an activity that police try to prevent), taking stones from the road bed, intentionally getting told to 'go away' by the police, cutting down hunters' towers, as well as many other anti-authoritarian actions.

Spread over a large area in the forests of the „Göhrde,“ in the Wendland region of Germany, thousands of activists used their direct action skills and dodged police successfully while building barricades made of tree trunks on the small country paths, and trespassing on the famous railway that will soon carry the toxic and radioactive load of the Castor transport.

Some of the paths, which are very small but are usable by cars if driven carefully, were made completely impassable by activists eager to gain points by building very effective barricades (we know this well – we were some of the fools who decided to drive too near the railway and we became stuck between the quickly appearing barricades along with other activist cars and many police cars as well!).

These kinds of forest games help to prepare activists for the coming Castor transport, which will be slowed on its journey by effective direct action both on and around the railway. The game helps participants gain knowledge of the forest landscape, become more confident in their interaction with the police, and gain experience with different types of direct action.

It also helps to prepare the landscape for the upcoming, more serious, actions by encouraging road blocks, some of which will stall police who may be on their way to break up blockades on the day of the Castor transport itself.

Police presence was heavy at the site of the game, with helicopters, tanks, police vans and cars, horses, and police dogs all present at different times to try to minimize the impacts of the activist participants. Despite this, the game was very successful and participants gained many points for their direct action efforts!

Later on the evening of 7th, a candle-light vigil was held in Metzingen. This is an interesting sort of vigil, as it has a double-meaning for people participating in the anti-Castor movement.

Because candle-light vigils are generally considered to be religiously-motivated events, they are difficult demonstrations to forbid, so police had to allow for the hundreds of participants to gather.

This event, however, turned into a large party on the street, with people eventually blockading it and causing consternation among police forces. One person was sent to hospital after scuffles broke out, and several demonstrators suffered head wounds due to police violence.

The Ralley Monte Göhrde has a long tradition and was part of the anti-Castor resistance in the last few years. It always starts in Metzingen, where there's also an info point and a resistance camp.

Some years ago the police forbade all camps of anti-nuclear activists in the Wendland – as a reaction people in the village of Metzingen decided to open their barns and houses to activists and turn the whole village into a resistance camp – this is not possible to be forbidden. These days Metzingen is a resistance knot for hundreds of protesters.

http://castor.de | http://contratom.de | http://nucleaer-heritage.net

[original article]

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German riot police break up nuclear protest

BERLIN (AFP) — German riot police tried Monday to break up a human blockade of a radioactive waste disposal site in the country's biggest anti-nuclear protests since 2001.

In a sign of the fierce popular opposition to nuclear power in Germany, security forces in riot gear began extracting and carrying one-by-one some of the roughly 1,000 demonstrators away from the entrance to the Gorleben waste dump in northern Germany, a police spokesman said.

The demonstrators, many of whom had braved cold, damp conditions to camp outside the site for several days, were seeking to block the arrival at the site of 11 trucks containing between them 123 tonnes of radioactive waste.

The shipment had already seen the biggest and most violent anti-nuclear protests for years as it made its way by train from France over the weekend, with 16,000 police deployed against some 15,000 protestors along the route.

Police had used truncheons to disperse protesters and used water cannon to put out barricades set on fire by activists.

As a result the train, which left a retreatment centre in western France on Friday, made it to the town of Dannenberg almost 14-and-a-half hours behind schedule, police said.

There it was transferred onto lorries on Monday morning and was due to embark on the final 20-kilometre (12-mile) journey by road -- but not until the blockade at Gorleben had been cleared, authorities said.

Police said they expected this to happen by the end of the day but the protesters were not leaving without a struggle, with activists doing everything they could to hinder the authorities.

A few kilometres from Gorleben, activists built two tall cement pyramids, chaining four demonstrators to each, and parked 37 tractors along the route.

"We will stick it out," one young female protester said on rolling news channel N-TV.

Environmentalist groups have for years demanded that the shipments be stopped due to possible radiation leaks and security risks. In March 2001, 30,000 police were deployed to halt protests in the largest single security operation in postwar Germany.

Environmental pressure group BI Umweltschutz said Monday that the containers were emitting stronger radioactive rays than is allowed on public roads, calling it "irresponsible" to subject police and demonstrators to such a health risk.

The German government has approved plans to mothball the last of its 17 reactors by about 2020, and polls show a majority of people in Western Europe's most populous country oppose nuclear power.

But Chancellor Angela Merkel has called for the process to be slowed down over fears it will be impossible to slash greenhouse gas emissions without nuclear energy, which produces a quarter of the country's electricity.

Skyrocketing energy costs have also sparked the calls to reconsider the phase-out.

The head of Germany's Green Party, which was in government with Gerhard Schroeder's SPD when the decision to phase out nuclear energy was taken, said that opposition to nuclear power had been less visible in recent times.

"But when it comes to it, it can be mobilised," Reinhard Buetikofer said.

"The peaceful protest by 16,000 people on Saturday and the numerous actions along the route have shown that people are firmly opposed to nuclear power," the head of the Greens' parliamentary fraction Volker Beck said.

The lawmaker called the protests a "huge success."

[original article]

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