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850 demonstrated in Ahaus and Rossendorf
Diet Simon - 22.03.2004 01:17
German mainstream media report 700 demonstrators in Ahaus near the Dutch border, 150 in Rossendorf near Dresden protesting on Sunday against the expected transportation of 951 spent nuclear fuel rods 600 km across the country soon.
Solidarity stopped police data grab.
The Castor stays here.
The X, symbol for "We'll always stand in the way", is attached.
How to get it down again?
Celebratory dance.
Teach them young, it's their future.
It needn't always be grim.
Safe transport.
In Ahaus the demonstrators moved from the town hall to an “interim” storage hall for nuclear waste, led by farmers on 75 tractors. Placards said “Stop Trittin” (Jürgen Trittin, the federal environment minister) and “We don’t want the Castor” (the storage caskets). According to police there were no incidents.
"Berlin hasn’t understood us properly yet, unfortunately,” said Ahaus resistance spokesman, Andreas Eckert. "We demand that no transport take place.” The activists want waste produced in Rossendorf to stay there until a final storage place is identified.
Trittin had stopped the transport licensing procedure for a week to give the states of Saxony (Dresden-Rossendorf) and North-Rhine Westphalia (Ahaus) time to agree on trucking or railing the waste. For the full background go to  http://de.indymedia.org/2004/03/77415.shtml.
The 150 activists who gathered in Rossendorf also demanded that the waste stay there until a final repository was chosen. It was the second protest against transport outside the former research centre.
It all began quite relaxed, reported a local paper, with cake buffet, juggling youths, police looking laid back. But the mood changed when Castor opponents fixed a yellow X of plywood to a sculpture outside the research centre. Riot police filmed the action, then tried to pick out those responsible. They wanted their personal data, possibly for legal action for damaging property.
Some of the Rossendorf activists expressed disappointment that the novelty of protest seemed to be wearing off, especially as Trittin had stopped the licensing for now.
Most demonstrators are sure that the transports will happen within two months. A technical university professor from Ahaus, Heinrich Wansing, says he’s seen many “tactical manoeuvres” like the temporary licensing stop.
“First (North-Rhine Westphalian) premier Peer Steinbrück says he regards the transports as senseless. Then a few days later he negotiates with Trittin about rail transport, which is cheaper to police. Wansing says it was self-evident he had to go to Rossendorf. “We’ve been politically socialised by Ahaus.”
The responsible Rossendorf rally organiser Yves Zirke criticises the get-tough approach of the police. “The Stop the Castor action alliance wants to and will demonstrate without violence. But it’s to be feared that on Day X there will be violent clashes.”
Below is an excerpt from the Rossendorf activists’ own description of their action in German at http://de.indymedia.org/2004/03/77622.shtml.
“In pleasant spring weather more than 100 people came to the former Rossendorf atomic research centre for a Sunday stroll to protest against transportation of radioactive waste to Ahaus. In the grounds waste from radioactive materials produced over 34 years in research activities is stored in 18 Castor containers. The unnecessary restoring of the waste into a hall of the same construction type and safety standard in Ahaus requires transportation right across Germany. The Saxony state government is at this time considering whether to change the mode of transportation from trucking to railing.
”More background information about Rossendorf is at http://www.castorstopp-dresden.de/hintergr.html.
”In a pleasant gathering with coffee and cake things at first were quite peaceful. But when a large yellow X was attached to a sculpture at the entrance to the grounds, called ironically “Controlled Power”, the police made a problem of it. But as they were themselves not able to detach the well-fixed object, it stayed there until the end of the demonstration. Determined resistance by activists was able to stymie a violent attempt to obtain the personal data of the X-affixers.
”The subsequent demonstration on route B6 along the grounds continued peacefully. But after the event an incident occurred in which a demonstrators who had photographed police from a great distance, was pretty violently led off and forced to take the film out of his camera.
”All in all a good event with a bit of friction here and there, in which the especially rough Leipzig police once again confirmed their reputation as such. However, there could have been a few more people.”
German mainstream media reports at
http://www.wdr.de/themen/politik/nrw/atommuelltransport/demo_040321.jhtml
http://www.sz-online.de/nachrichten/artikel.asp?id=586540
http://news.google.com/news?hl=de&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&client=google&num=30&newsclusterurl=http://www.jungewelt.de/2004/03-22/014.php
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