Dozen of activists together with Indigenous Sami are protesting exterior the workplace of Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre
ByJAN M. OLSEN Related Press
COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Dozen of activists, together with Indigenous Sami, protested Friday exterior the workplace of Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, vowing to dam entry to remind Norway’s authorities that they need a wind farm eliminated as a result of they are saying it endangers the reindeer herders’ lifestyle.
In February, the identical human rights activists occupied the Ministry of Petroleum and Power for 4 days, and later additionally blocked the entrances to 10 ministries. The Norwegian authorities then apologized for failing to behave regardless of a Supreme Court docket ruling in favor of the Sami, and Gahr Støre additionally acknowledged “ongoing human rights violations.”
“We had been promised a change. We had been promised that our human rights can be revered. But nothing has occurred for nearly 100 days” since Gahr Støre stated the federal government would do one thing, activist Elle Nystad advised Norwegian information company NTB on Friday.
“We is not going to hand over till the wind generators on Fosen are demolished and the land is returned to reindeer herders,” stated one other activist, Elle Ravdna Nakkalajarvi.
The activists plan to sleep exterior the prime minister’s workplace till Saturday — the 600th day since a Supreme Court docket ruling stated the wind farm was violating the rights of the Sami. They stated that they had introduced chains to hyperlink themselves.
On the middle of the dispute are 151 generators at Europe’s largest onshore wind farm within the Fosen district, about 450 kilometers (280 miles) north of Oslo. Norway’s Supreme Court docket dominated in October 2021 that the development of the generators had violated the rights of the Sami, who’ve used the land for reindeer for hundreds of years.
The windmills are nonetheless working. The activists say a transition to inexperienced vitality should not come on the expense of the rights of Indigenous individuals.
The activists, many wearing conventional Sami clothes, had began the day by standing alongside the highway main as much as the Norwegian royal palace as darkish automobiles although to be carrying members of the federal government drove previous to the royal palace.
The federal government officers had been attending a daily briefing of the Norwegian monarch, which is a formality. After the Council of State assembly, Gahr Støre met with among the activists and advised them “I need to inform you that the matter is just not at relaxation.”
As they marched by means of downtown Oslo to the constructing housing the prime minister’s workplace, some demonstrators waved the Sami flag, whereas others held banners — one in every of them studying “Respect existence or count on resistance.”