linksunten Archiv

An anti-nuclear trek to a big Berlin demo on Saturday grows to 200 vehicles at times. There are now regularly 100 farm tractors, trucks and construction trailers which are joined sporadically by a hundred other vehicles.

It’s being received enthusiastically in each town on its route.

On Monday the protesters from Gorleben, a rural northern village where nuclear waste is now stored in a hall and where a leaking salt pit is planned to be the permanent repository, were received by 1,000 cheering people in Braunschweig.

Later the trek was welcomed enthusiastically in Salzgitter, the home of Volkswagen. On Tuesday they were due in Morsleben, a nuclear dump in a former potash mine where authorities say a 20,000-tonne lump of rock is likely to break from the ceiling and fall up to 45 metres.

Nuclear opponents have taken heart from heavy defeats for Chancellor Angelika Merkel’s conservatives in provincial elections. They’re likely to lose two states where they now govern. With national elections due on the 21^st, Merkel’s party is keen to hold onto nuclear power, now due to be abandoned by 2020 under an agreement between power companies and the previous government.

The opponents point out that opinion surveys show that even a majority of the people who normally vote for Merkel’s CDU party are against nuclear power.

Trek pictures for free downloading and publication at http://www.publixviewing.de/sortiment/bild-1/index.html.

Contact the organisers: Wolfgang Ehmke #49170 510 56 06, Kerstin Rudek #49160 159 24 73 (moving with the trek).