by Deep Green Resistance News Service | May 3, 2012 | Obstruction & Occupation
By Steve Lyttle / Charlotte Observer
Six people were arrested Thursday morning in Catawba County after a group of protesters from Greenpeace and three other organizations blocked a train from entering Duke Energy’s steam-powered plant in Catawba County by chaining themselves to the tracks.
The group aimed the protest at Duke Energy, for its use of coal-powered plants, and at technology giant Apple. Leaders of the action said they are protesting Apple because it is using Duke Energy power for the expansion of its data center at Maiden in Catawba County.
“The group was able to stop the train from passing by,” said Molly Dorozenski, a Greenpeace spokesperson.
The Catawba County Sheriff’s Office confirmed that arrests were made. According to reports from the scene, four people who had chained themselves to the tracks were taken into custody, along with two others at the scene.
The action came at the same time as Greenpeace demonstrators were outside Duke Energy’s corporate headquarters in Charlotte’s uptown, protesting during the company’s shareholders meeting.
Dorozenski said the incident began Thursday morning when a train carrying coal arrived at the Marshall Steam Station. She said four activists chained themselves to the tracks, to prevent the train from delivering coal. She said other protesters put the Apple logo on train cars, to show the group’s belief that Apple is profiting by Duke Energy’s use of coal.
Greenpeace contends the use of coal is creating an environmental hazard, and that coal mining is damaging to the ecology of the Appalachia region.
Joining Greenpeace in blocking the train were members of Radical Action for Mountain People’s Survival (RAMPS), Katuah Earth First! and Keepers of the Mountains Foundation, according to Greenpeace.
“Duke is using data center expansion in North Carolina, like Apple’s, to justify reinvesting in old coal-fired power plants and even worse — as an excuse to build new coal and nuclear plants,” said Gabe Wisnieweski, Greenpeace’s USA Coal Campaign director.
“The climate and communities throughout Appalachia and North Carolina are paying the price for Apple and Duke’s short-sighted decisions,” he added.
Read more from The Charlotte Observer:
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 16, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy, Obstruction & Occupation
By Jeremy Hance / Mongabay
Locals protesting the destruction of their forest in Papua New Guinea for two palm oil plantations say police have been sent in for a second time to crack-down on their activities, even as a Commission of Inquiry (COI) investigates the legality of the concession. Traditional landowners in Pomio District on the island East New Britain say police bankrolled by Malaysian logging giant Rimbunan Hijau (RH) have terrorized the population, including locking people in shipping containers for three consecutive nights. The palm oil concessions belongs to a company known as Gilford Limited, which locals say is a front group for RH.
“The current situation is very bad. The [villagers] are trying their best to do (a) blockade, but because of the police involvement the people are very scared to stand up and defend their land and speak their rights. The logging operation is still going on and is destroying the big forest, the rivers, and sea more every day,” a local landowner told mongabay. The landowner spoke on anonymity for fear of reprisal.
Last year, complaints over mistreatment by police in logging areas rose to such a feverish pitch across Papua New Guinea that police commissioner, Tom Kulunga, withdrew all police forces from logging areas in the country. But now locals in Pomio, at least, say the police have returned and abusive practices continue.
“The police have mistreated the locals by abusing them with sticks, fan belts, telling them to sit in the sun for five hours, swearing at them, arriving in the villages at nigh forcing them to sign papers with the people understanding the content, tying their hands to their back, and commanding them to run in the hot sun,” the landowner said, noting that the alleged abuse began on March 5th.
The landowner also said that the police locked up six people in shipping containers for three nights.
Last year, locals said the police were paid and flown in by Rimbunan Hijau (RH), which was confirmed by Assistant Police Commissioner Anton Billy to the Australian Broadcast Corporation (ABC) in an interview. He told the ABC that this was “normal.”
“We don’t have any funds to get these people there and pay them allowance and all this stuff,” Billy said.
The two palm oil concessions in question, covering some 26,000 hectares for a 99-year lease, are a part of a hugely controversial land program by the Papua New Guinea government known as Special Agricultural and Business Leases (SABLs). Critics contend SABLs are being used en masse to circumvent Papua New Guinea’s strong community land laws—where 97 percent of the land is ostensibly owned by local communities—granting massive areas of land to foreign corporations for extractive activities such as logging. SABLs have led to conflict and deforestation across Papua New Guinea. Last year the government suspended any new SABLs and launched an independent investigation into the practice, which up to then had handed over 5.2 million hectares to foreign corporations, an area larger than Costa Rica.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 3, 2012 | Obstruction & Occupation, Repression at Home
By Tania Branigan / The Guardian
Rural residents protesting against land grabs have clashed with police in north and south-west China, according to accounts posted online, in the latest cases to be sparked by one of the country’s most potent sources of unrest.
Villagers in south-western Yunnan province were arrested and injured when police broke up a a three-day blockade of a highway over the death of a rubber farmer who complained her land had been illegally seized, according to an account posted by an unknown user.
An officer at the Xishuangbanna police station confirmed that officers had dispersed farmers whose protest had blocked the road for several days last week, but said he did not know if there had been arrests and denied that anyone had been beaten.
The local government could not be reached on Tuesday, a public holiday in China.
Land grabs are the primary source of rural unrest in China. Earlier this year the international land rights organisation Landesa, which surveys Chinese farmers annually, warned: “The pace of land takings continues to accelerate, often leaving farmers poorly compensated and embittered.”
According to the online account, rubber farmer Li Xuelan committed suicide on 24 March over the land grab.
The following day her relatives and colleagues held a memorial in the road, resulting in tailbacks up to 3.7 miles (6km) long. The account said numbers swelled into the thousands. But two days later, around 300 riot and special police forcibly dispersed them, injuring and arresting several people, it said.
Photographs posted with the account showed large numbers of police and villagers, with one showing an officer carrying a woman away.
Separately, an overseas rights group said police had detained 22 ethnic Mongolians after hundreds of them protested against the seizure of land in the northern region of Inner Mongolia.
Although the area has generally been seen as peaceful, last year saw the biggest wave of unrest for two decades after the death of a herder who had tried to stop a convoy of coal trucks.
There has been growing tension over damage to grazing land. More than 80 police used “brutal force” on Monday to break up a demonstration of Mongolians from Tulee village near Tongliao city, the New York-based Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Centre said.
In a statement emailed to Reuters it said five protesters were seriously injured after trying to block a bulldozer from a state-backed forestry company from working on their farmland.
“Police violently beat up the protesters with batons. Some were bleeding, some were beaten down on the ground. Women were pulled by their hair and thrown into police vehicles,” the group said, citing a protester.
They were reportedly seeking the return of about 4,000 hectares (10,000 acres) of land which they said the forestry company had stopped managing.
Police in the region said they were unaware of any protest, and a man who answered the phone at the Tongliao public security bureau said offices were closed.
From The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/03/chinese-police-land-grab-protests
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 26, 2012 | Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy, Mining & Drilling, Obstruction & Occupation
By Ahni / Intercontintental Cry
Indigenous Lumad communities in South Cotabato have organized a set of blockades against an Australian-owned mining company that wants to relocate them to make way for a new copper-gold mine project.
A group of journalists were invited by a local Catholic Church this past weekend to sit down with the Lumads and discuss the situation.
Speaking through interpreters, the Lumad explained how Sagittarius Mines Inc. (SMI), an affiliate of Australia’s Xstrata Copper, recently outlined the terms of a proposed relocation project on a bunch of tarpaulins which it posted in the region without telling anyone.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, the terms of the relocation were written in Cebuano, a common language in the Philippines, but which most Lumads can neither read nor write.
As the Lumads later learned, SMI had given them until March 22 to agree to the relocation proposal, which also included compensation for their land and their farms.
“The community was shocked by the relocation notice. I don’t want my family relocated,” said Juli Samling, a Lumad community member.
“Here in our community, everything is almost free. You have a land where you can plant to put food on the table. In the relocation site, you have to pay for everything to sustain the family”, Samling added.
Various allegations have been made that the Catholic Church pushed the Lumads into setting up the blockades; but Samling insists that isn’t the case.
All but one of the protesting communities are opposed to SMI’s Tampakan copper-gold mine. The one that isn’t opposed, simply wants the company to act responsibility.
“We are supportive of the mining project only that we have problems with their commitments. If we can settle it, which should include concerned government and private organizations, then no problem,” said Flao Saluli, the community’s leader.
Saluli also questions SMI’s activities in lieu of a January 9, 2012 letter from Juan Miguel Cuna, national director of the Environmental Management Bureau, to Peter Forrestal, president of SMI.
In that letter, Cuna informed Forrestal that SMI must “refrain from undertaking any development activity in areas mentioned in the application for ECC [Environmental Compliance Certificate] until the same is issued in your favor including permits from concerned government units.”
The Department of Environment and Natural Resources’ (DENR) rejected the company’s application for an ECC earlier that same month.
There is currently a local ban on open-pit mining in South Cotabato.
John Arnaldo, SMI’s corporate communication manager, however, says the company’s not doing anything wrong and that it has properly consulted the Lumad, stating, “This process has been widely appreciated by the respective tribal and barangay council leaders of affected communities, and for them to communicate this to their community members”.
“The company recognizes its obligation to the indigenous peoples and affected communities and we respect their rights.”
From Intercontinental Cry: http://intercontinentalcry.org/philippine-lumad-communities-set-up-five-blockades-to-resist-relocation/
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 22, 2012 | Mining & Drilling, Obstruction & Occupation
By Elias Cabrera / Inter Press Service & Corpwatch
A thick fog flows over the eastern range of the Colombian Andes. Here and there, the constant wind lifts the clouds to reveal lagoons, cloud forests, and páramo, an Andean alpine ecosystem known as a “mountaintop sponge” for its massive water-holding capacity.
Descending lower into the Upper Magdalena Valley, about 400 kilometres southwest of Bogotá, rural communities farm a wide variety of fruit and vegetable crops, and raise animals that not only sustain families, but help feed Colombia’s major cities.
In the municipal districts of Gigante and Garzón in the department (province) of Huila, the bucolic setting is interrupted by the platforms of several oil wells belonging to Emerald Energy PLC.
Emerald Energy, founded in London in 1996, was awarded its first exploration permit for the Matambo Bloc in Gigante. (Governments typically auction off oil exploration rights on specific parcels of land known as blocks or blocs.)
On Aug. 9, 2011, the Colombian Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development issued Environmental License 1609 to Emerald Energy, allowing it to install five new platforms and three oil wells in the VSM 32 Bloc, adjacent and uphill of the Matambo Bloc.
Four months after the permit was authorised, campesinos opposing the project gathered in the farming village of Zuluaga.
“I believe we are all united here because of the Emerald’s crude behaviour within our region,” said Luis Jorge Sanchez Garcia, Huila’s former governor. “It is vital that we unite to protect our natural resources from oil development, (and) in particular protect our water. If some disaster happens, it will not affect just the countryside where the operations are; it will affect our entire region.”
“Emerald Energy is destroying the land and water,” Armando Acuña, a municipal council member from Garzón, told CorpWatch. “Their exploration, with underground explosions is causing landslides and the ground to sink, homes, and crops are being destroyed and we are losing our water.”
Communities defend Matambo
Unique to the Americas, páramo are mostly found in the Andes Mountains, with more than 60 percent occurring in Colombia. The vegetation, a unique mixture of lichens, mosses, algae and grasses, has incredible water retention capacity, birthing major rivers such as the Orinoco, Magdalena and Amazon.
The Matambo Bloc, which sits below the páramo in the Magdalena Valley, gets its name from a mountain in the shape of the face of a giant who, according to local legend, will one day arise from the earth.
Since the Matambo Bloc was opened, the region encompassed by the operations has seen a steady deterioration of its land and water, according to the Intersectorial Association of Gigante & Garzón (AISEG).
In 2000, two years after the Gigante 1 well was drilled to 4,815 metres, “there was an explosion that resulted in a fire that burned for 25 days with a flame that was about 30 meters high, shutting down operations,” Jorge Enrique Alvarado, a municipal council member, told CorpWatch.
“This whole area had a dense hazy cloud over it during that whole month and the area nearby had all sorts of burnt oil and ash accumulated on their crops, cattle and fish ponds.”
In early January, the communities affected by Emerald Energy attempted to stop Emerald’s expansion.
“As of November 2011 we have been blocking the entrance to all operations in VSM 32 Bloc, and do not intend to allow any machinery to enter,” said Alberto Calderon, a member of Intersectorial Association of Gigante & Garzón (AISEG), at a public roundtable that followed the blockade.
The middle-aged farmer lives with his wife, two children and some cows and chickens on a small, self-sufficient farm that produces coffee, avocados, onions, and cacao. His land borders Emerald’s oil well Iskana 1.
“Nothing they have brought us has helped us,” he said of Emerald. “Our rivers are drying. They foment divisions within the community, and our youth do not want to work the land after they have worked for the company.”
Read more from Inter Press Service: https://web.archive.org/web/20120328214541/http://www.ipsnews.net:80/news.asp?idnews=107155
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 21, 2012 | Mining & Drilling, Obstruction & Occupation
From Occupy the Machine
In Honor of Struggles Against the Extraction Industry Everywhere
In Memory of the Workers Whose Lives Were Taken By BP Two Years Ago,
Join Us In Saying:
“CLEAN AIR AND WATER FOR ALL”
“TAKE BACK EARTH DAY!”
LET’S SHUT DOWN THE TAR SANDS AND BLOCKADE AN OIL REFINERY!
Download this Call in pamphlet form to distribute
What: A festival of resistance and alternatives to the fossil fuel economy, in the shadow of the Houston Valero refinery, culminating in a refinery blockade.
When: April 19th – 24th
Where: Hartmann Park, Manchester Neighborhood, Houston, TX
Why: The Alberta Tar Sands project is uprooting and poisoning Indigenous people in Canada while destroying the ancient boreal forests that are their home. The huge amount of carbon released will seriously worsen global climate change. The Keystone XL Pipeline will take oil from one of the most ecologically devastating projects on the face of the planet to Houston.
In Houston it will be refined by Valero and other companies. These refineries are surrounded by working-class neighborhoods throughout the Gulf, bringing cancer-causing toxins directly into their backyards. The majority of the Tar Sands oil processed in these refineries will be shipped overseas, ensuring that North American oil workers and those whose rights and lives have been uprooted by these companies won’t even see any long-term benefit for themselves.
Meanwhile, two years after the Deepwater Horizon explosion that killed 11 workers and devastated the communities of the Gulf, BP has had a record year of profits. BP has escaped justice yet again in its recent legal victory against the shrimpers and fishermen who they’ve put out of work and the families of the workers who died under their watch.
We invite those who oppose the Tar Sands Project and who want clean air, water and soil for all to come down to Houston for a festival of resistance and alternatives to the fossil fuel economy. Let’s continue to build the power of our communities, amplify the voices of those most affected by companies like Valero, and join together in nonviolent direct action to blockade a refinery.
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