Saving Iceland

Saving Iceland

Ruins of three houses from the 10th and 11th centuries have been discovered at the archaeological excavation site at Háls by Kárahnjúkar. Three houses are underneath a layer of ash from the Hekla eruption of 1104.

A discovery that revolutionizes our
understanding of the Sagas

Same site a few days later

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On Tuesday the 17/09/2005 the Students Union of the University of Sussex held their annual freshers fair, where new students are given freebies that no-one needs in exchange for custom. During this event, about 6 students dressed in reindeer-like costumes merrily surrounded the Barclaycard stall. Read More

Corporate Watch
Newsletter 25

Direct action against the Karahnjukar hydro-electric dam project in Iceland has started in earnest. The dam will devastate Western Europe’s last pristine wilderness, solely to power an Alcoa aluminium smelter (see Corporate Watch number 23, April May 2005, page 9)

In June, three activists invaded the 10th World Aluminium Conference, Reykjavik, covering speakers from Alcoa and Bechtel (who are building the smelter) in green yoghurt during their talk on ‘sustainable’ aluminium. All three were charged with causing up to £50,000 of damage. British activist Paul Gill was held for four days. With the construction of the dam now more than half complete, an international protest camp has been set up near to the site. Over 30 people have gathered to organise direct action against the continuing devastation of global ecology in the interest of corporate profits. The 19th July saw Iceland’s first ever lock on blockade, when 25 activists shut down the site for three hours, locking on to a Caterpillar construction vehicle and a pick up truck at the main junction in the site and blocking two other access roads. Fifteen were arrested and later released without charge. Impreglio, the Italian construction firm building the dam, threatened to take civil charges against the activists but has since backtracked. Experts concur that 90% of the irreversible environmental damage will be done only when the water floods the land, so its not too late to protect Iceland’s ecology, and with Smyril Line offering a round trip on the ferry for £49 from Shetland, what better place is there to spend the rest of your summer?

ANARCHY IN ICELAND

Iceland was under attack. Violent international protestors were arriving on its shores, fresh from the G8 and bent on futher destruction. The Icelandic police were calling for the urgent tightening of border controls. Laws had just been passed allowing foreigners to have their phones tapped, their houses searched, and their possessions confiscated, all without warrants. News presenters were emitting warning gouts of Icelandic, spattered with the word ‘Anarkisti!’, alongside blown-up images of figures in IRA balaclavas. There was muttered talk, on all sides, of terrorism. Read More

Saving Iceland
28 July 2007

In view of the police repression and slander campaign unleashed against Saving Iceland in the last few days by the Icelandic State and National Broadcaster RUV we feel it is important that this is compared with the following article from our campaign in 2005. This is particularly relevant in terms of the resurfacing threats of deportations.
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With the growing awareness of climate change, carbon emission restrictions may not be too far off. Because countries that pollute the most may well get the heaviest restrictions, rather than seeking to reduce their emissions many industrial corporations are looking to move operations abroad.
Iceland, despite modern European levels of education, welfare and wealth, has almost no heavy industry. Their carbon rations will be up for grabs. Seeing the extra pollution coming, in 2001 Iceland got a 10% increase on the CO2 limits imposed by the Kyoto treaty. The problem is that the lack of heavy industry means a lack of the major power supply needed for such things. But Iceland has glacial rivers in vast areas unpopulated by humans; land for hydroelectric dams that can be seen as carbon-neutral. Read More

Did the Icelandic authorities think that their terrorizing of legitimate international protesters would stamp out all resistance against their criminal destruction of the last great European wilderness?! If so, they were wrong!

Saving Iceland are delighted to report that at noon on Friday 26. August three courageous Icelandic demonstrators climbed the roof of the head offices of the Icelandic Government and tore down the cloven flag of the Icelandic state, replacing it with a banner saying in Icelandic “NO DAMNED ALUMINIUM FACTORIES”. They then proceeded to have coffee and cakes on the roof. The demonstrators are not linked with the protests in the East and in Reykjavík this summer. Read More

Click for video: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/media/2005/08/321384.mov

A small specimen of the repression that legitimate international protesters have had to endure from the Icelandic authorities this summer.

Neither of the two civilian cop thugs ever produced any credentials or reason for the arrests. The girl was detained for several hours. The boy for 25 hours. Both arrests turned out to be completely illegal!

That same night the Icelandic cop thugs knocked unconscious a 74 year old professor of medicine who wanted to make enquires about those who had been arrested. The man was unconscious for about half an hour. The cops refused to call an ambulance for their victim.

The professor is pressing charges against the police.

Marked and unmarked police vehicles followed people hitching along the south route for days and vehicles driving the north route were followed in to the middle of nowhere overnight. The national news has shown film of an undercover (not anymore!) car tailing people in Reykjavik round and round a roundabout!

The authorities are obviously scared of these new direct action tactics spreading in Iceland and are throwing all their (limited) resources at us. The police were made to look ridiculous as we outsmarted them at every move in the highlands, now they look even worse for over reacting.

Deportation papers have been issued for 21 people involved in the blockade at the Karahnjukar dam construction site on the 19th July and an action at the Alcoa alluminium smelter plant in the Reyðarfjörður on the 4th August.

 

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