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SOS ITOIZ EUROPEAN TOUR: PROTEST AT VATICAN DOME

Greetings to The whole of Italy and all the people from different countries from all over the world that are here today.

We are Solidari@s con Itoiz a group campaigning and working to defend the earth and more specifically against an irrational and devastating dam which they want to build in the Basque country in the name of “progress”.

We have chosen this place to make our public and non violent protest because it is one of the most famous places in Italy and one of the most visited places by people of all nationalities. From here and using this square as a loud speaker we want to pass the message to the world that earth must be looked after and that is in our hands.

Three of our colleagues have hanged from the San Pietro dome, intending to put a banner up with the following writing: SOS ITOIZ – STOP THE DAMS. They intend to stay up there as long as they can.

The Itoiz dam is, like many other projects carried out by humans in many points of the planet, a destructive, wasteful, anti-environmental and an illegal project and we can even describe it as criminal.

Destructive, because filling up the dam nine villages of the valley will disappear and another six will be directly affected. Traditional ways of life which have lasted for thousands of years till our days, based on respect towards earth will disappear together with a historical-artistical “patrimony” of uncountable value (non economical).

Wasteful, as the project is within a pharaonic hydraulic policy which is driving us towards disproportional spending of this prime material ( water) instead of learning and teaching more efficient and cleaner ways of using it. We must not forget that water is the most needed prime material and the one we are polluting the most.

Anti-environmental, because the dam will flood 3 areas considered natural reserves, two ZEPAS ( special areas for the protection of birds) in valleys where the transition between the pirenaic and Mediterranean climate takes place. A place where time, earth and the sun have created a very special microclimate in which many animal species live and are in clear danger of extinction.

Illegal, because the dam has been declared illegal and invalid by the National Court, as confirmed by the High court. In spite of all this, none of these bodies have done anything to stop the works, which has left clear the injustice of Justice.

Criminal: this adjective is as true as it is real, because the Spanish government have hidden documents of an study for over 15 years. This study declares the dam as a very high risk dam and it could have catastrophic consequences. This way they were trying to hide the fact that the lives of many people were in danger (as it happened in the Vaijont dam in 1963 in which more than 2000 people were killed), but the opposition got hold of the study and made it public.

For all these reasons and the unfair sentence of 4 years and 10 months that 8 members of the group have been given (for stopping the works of the dam in a very clean way), we are touring Europe in protest; it began at the European parliament in Strasbourg with a public press release.

We have been touring since September last year visiting different countries doing actions and protests as well as video-talks. Our aim is to inform and to get support from all kinds of social groups in order to get international support to pressure the Navarra government and the Spanish government, who are responsible for this barbaric project.

The opposition in our land is powerful but we think that the responsibility is not only of the people that live in this land but everybody’s; one thing we all have in common is the union with earth.

We must realise and make the ones that try to rule our lives realise that earth does not belong to anybody, the different generations lent it to us and many more are still to come. LETS DEFFEND THE EARTH STOP THE DESTRUCTION OF OUR PLANET THEY WILL NOT PASS THROUGH ITOIZ

More information about the tour: http://www.s-o-s-itoiz.org.uk Photos and update http://www.tmcrew.org/int/itoiz

SOLIDARIOS CON ITOIZ Roma 24/ 02/ 2000

——————————————— Solidari@s con Itoiz http://www.s-o-s-itoiz.org.uk/ http://www.tmcrew.org/int/itoiz e-mail:

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revolutionary greetings

Lets begin by introducing ourselves We are the collectif Solidarios con Itoiz, from Euskalerria (the basque country). We are currently fighting against a dam/electric powerplant project in the north east of the province of Navarra. The Dam project would drown 9 villages and along with those 5 natural reserve areas,3 of them being special bird protection zones. Few regions in Europe have such a rich fauna and flora than those where they now want tobuild their monstruos dam! It is important to note that apart from the 9 villagesthat would disapear, 6 others would become completely unreachable. Two valleys would be left unliveable toany form of human animal or vegetal life! Our collective is fighting the damming project for about 5 years. Our approach is public, non violent and direct action.In this period we have carried out about40 different actions of various types, the most successful being to cut the electricity wires of the concrete factory set up to build the dam walls. The works on the dam where thereby delayed for 1 year. As a consequence of this accion 8 members of the collective whre arrested and held for 2 months and, 2 years later tried and condemned to 5 years of imprisonnement. The judgement was totally political, the judges, servants of power, had to go back as far as 1874 to find a precedent allowing them justifytheir sentence. Time has now come for the condemned the enter prison. Although the collective has always accepted legal and other consequences of their actions, we think that it is now the right moment to publically denounce the Itoiz dam project and the political judgement of 5 years of imprisonnement against 8 of the collectivesmembers. Their were tried and condemned for stopping a not only irrational and devastory but also illegal project. It was declared illegal by a national spanish court , this verdict being confirmed by the spanish supremecourt later on. We also want to denounce the judges that condemned 8 people to 5 years of imprisonnement, perverting the law in that way and the spanish governement not even able to set a stop to the constuction works afterdeclaring them illegal!

For that reason we are touring Europe since September 1999. We carried out 2 actions on this tour: climbing the infamous “millenium wheel” in london and rallying at the International court of justice in the Hague giving about 30 video conferences.

It is time to strike again: With this email we would like to invite to a cyberaccion against all public and private entities involved in the Itoiz dam project! targets;political parties supporting the dam: Union del Pueblo Navarro (UPN): email: gp- http://www.upn.org

PARTIDO SOCIALISTO DE NAVARRA (PSN): http://psn-psoe.cin.es

PARTIDO SOCIALISTO OBRERO ESPAÑOL (PSOE): http://www.psoe.es UAGN:

IU: http://www.iu-eb.org

CDN: http://www.convergencianavarra.com construction companies:

LAIN: http://www.lain.es

SACYR: http://www.sacyr.com

governements of navarra and spain: Gobierno de Navarra: http://www.cfnavarra.es Email:

spanish ministery of environment: http://www.serviplus.es/medioambiente http://www.mma.es

Riegos de navarra: http://www.riegosdenavarra.com

Seccion de recursos hidricos:

Seccion de evaluacion ambiental: section economist and landscape ecology : Parlamento Navarra: www.parlamento-navarra.es

itoiz