Australia: tough law
(May, 1978) The Australian government is soon to introduce special legislation to try to stifle the growing opposition to uranium mining and export. Under it, trade unionists or anti-uranium activists who breached regulations could be fined up to 50000 dollars or jailed for up to five years. The planned Environment Protection (Nuclear Codes) Act would give the federal government almost total power to intervene in State affairs where uranium is concerned. It could override State laws in case of conflict, and federal codes would take precedence. (Opposition to mining is stronger in some states, like Victoria, than in others).
Contact/ MUAM -277 Brunswick St. Fitzroy 3065. Australia. 3-41 91 457.
Germany: scapegoat trial
A 22-month prison sentence imposed by a Hannover court in April on anti-nuke demonstrator Gerd Schulz is intended as a deterrent to all future reactor site occupations, by establishing that occupation is a criminal act. Schulz was one of 15,000 demonstrators who on March 19 1977 tried to occupy the reactor site at Grohnde, and were met with brutal police intervention on a massive scale. He was also one of 14 demonstrators chosen arbitrarily for arrest and one of the 11 finally brought to trial. He was sentenced for breach of the peace, resistance to arrest, threat of violence and occupation of railway lines. The judge said quite openly that the sentence was passed as a deterrent "There is no right to violence, for any goal at all".
The Hannover trials of Grohnde demonstrators have a double function: as after-the-event justification for the brutality used by the police, and above all to establish that any site occupation is a criminal act. The defendants and their Iawyers have treated it as a political trial, and have asserted the right to occupy sites. Legally, the trials have been a mockery, with the witnesses for the prosecution, mostly police, repeatedly contradicting each other, and having recourse regularly to their "limited permission to witness". The identification process was rigged, and "weapons" planted on the people assert, defence lawyers assert. The accused were treated by the court, from the start, as "criminals". Indeed, on the day of the demo itself the regional prime minister, Albrecht, told some of the demonstrators "I'll have you behind bars". Called as a witness, he talked of "those criminals". On Feb.25 in Hannover 7000 anti-nuke demonstrators called for all legal proceedings to be stopped. A lot of information is available about the Grohnde demo and this kind of trial, which could well foreshadow what will happen before long in other countries.
Contact/ Atom Info Center (Pnesseburo) Kornstr. 28-30 / 3000 Hannover 1 / FGR
UK: atomic police
The report on the Windscale Enquiry (UK) on expansion of re-processing gives precedence to controlling terrorism in a "plutonium economy" over the defence of civil liberties against erosion. This contradicts the "Flowers report", of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, which said the "unquantifiable effects of security measures that might become necessary in the plutonium economy of the future" should be a major consideration in deciding about plans for nuke expansion. Britain's Atomic Energy Constabulary, 400 strong, carry arms at all times, and have far-reaching powers of pursuit, entry, and arrest on suspicion, granted in 1976. Parker's conclusion is that to check terrorism "innocent people are certain to be subject to surveillance, if only to find out whether they are innocent or not".
Full details in State Research, Bulletin No5, ISSN 0141-1667, from 9 Poland Street, London Wi, 01-734-5831.