BY NORM DIXON
Thousands of people mobilised in an attempt to stop the transport of tonnes of nuclear waste from La Hague in France to a "temporary" N-waste dump in Gorleben, northern Germany.
On November 9, 5000 people turned out in Dannenberg for the only legal protest allowed. The next day, a "state of emergency" was declared for the period that the waste was being transported through Germany. Meetings or groups of more than three people were made illegal.
The Dannenberg protesters marched 7km in chilling winds to a field near the village of Splietau. The rally was accompanied by 200 tractors from a farmers' organisation, which formed a protective barrier to prevent police intervention.
Karina Lester and Nina Brown, from the Irati Wanti campaign to stop a N-waste dump in South Australia, addressed the demonstrators. They described terrible environmental destruction and loss of life caused by nuclear bomb tests, uranium mining and waste storage on their ancestral lands.
Around 30,000 heavily armed riot police from all over Germany were mobilised to control the protests. Despite the protest ban, anti-nuclear campaigners and police played cat-and-mouse as the train carrying 12 containers of waste rumbled slowly from Lueneburg to Dannenberg, a distance of 50km. Activists repeatedly sat down on the tracks, before being dragged off by police.
The train arrived in Dannenburg on November 11, where the waste was transferred by road to the storage facility at Gorleben, arriving on November 12. The transport of waste, and the mass protests, have become an annual event since 1995.
[For more coverage of the protests, visit <http://www.iratiwanti.org>.]
From Green Left Weekly, November 19, 2003.
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