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From: "Jo Makepeace" (webmaster@schnews.org.uk)
Subject: SchNEWS 585, 27th April 2007
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 16:09:03 +0100

DON'T BE SHELL-FISH

THE PRIZE IS RIGHT FOR ANTI-SHELL ACTIVIST, AS PROTESTS CONTINUE...

"Ireland should not negotiate away its environment for the sake of a few jobs..."
-Dr Owens Wiwa, brother of executed Nigerian poet Ken Saro Wiwa

A farmer who was one of the 'Rossport 5', imprisoned at the behest of Shell in 2005 (SchNEWS 505), has been awarded the prestigious Goldman Environment Prize, seen by some as the 'Nobel' of the environmentalists' world. Willie Corduff, from Mayo in west Ireland, picked up the award plus a $125,000 cash prize in San Francisco last Monday (for details of the five other winners see http://www.goldmanprize.org). Willie has been fighting Shell's plans to build an on-shore refinery next to his home for seven years and is strongly involved in the local 'Shell-to-Sea' campaign. The campaign had initial success in delaying the project through demonstrations and blockades of the site but since October last year the gloves have been off (See SchNEWS 564). Police and private security routinely use violence and intimidation to force vehicles past demonstrators and into the site. Builders are in the process of stripping the land of acres of peat from this Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in preparation for the refinery. A High Court ruling last week stated that the original route of the pipeline was now "defunct" (hadn't it always been?), ordering Shell to pay the £1 million cost of the hearing, and forcing them back to the drawing board. That ruling, and Willie's Goldman award, have completely vindicated the position of the five who went to jail. Not that this makes any difference to the state's ongoing campaign of harassment of those who oppose Shell. There have been a number of break-ins to the site, most recently last Friday when a group of women hopped over a fence and spent the next nine hours evading security. The next day saw a mass trespass on the site, resulting in six arrests. All were later released without charge.

Accusations of phone-tapping of activists have been made recently against Shell, not that a mega-corporate giant would surely ever think of such a thing... after all they prefer their opponents swinging from the end of an executioner's rope (see SchNEWS 49). Shell's Dublin HQ in Leeson Street has been the site of regular protests and was temporarily occupied on 27 March. Dublin Shell-to-Sea have called for another day of action chez oil barons from 7.30am (gulp!) today (27th).

* The Rossport Solidarity Camp 3rd Summer Gathering will be held on the June bank holiday weekend (1-4) - a community festival of resistance with music, workshops, kids events and more.

* See http://www.shelltosea.com  &  indymedia.ie

* For loads of footage of over-reactive cops protecting their local community from, well, the local community, search for 'Shell to Sea' at -
http://www.youtube.com

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