| Betuweline Campaign Update |
Betuweline campaign Update
The Betuwelijn is a Transport European Network project connecting Rotterdam, Netherlands, with the Ruhr-area with a cargo-dedicated trainline. Cost is some 10 billion euro's for the Dutch government (but we will make it more...). Construction will ruin some nature, bother people in the area and is useless. Calculations have shown that it will hardly decrease roadcargotransport and just increase total transport, obviously hazardous. At the moment GroenFront!, Dutch EarthFirst!, has squatted some eight farms and houses on route in the last year. These will have to be evicted before any demolishing can be done and thus will delay the project considerably. To increase the delay, we are constructing treehouses, tunnels, barricades etc. GroenFront! also occupies active building sites regularly, for more delay and publicity. Recently an infrastructure-convention has been disrupted as well and other actions such as public-aimed actions or an office occupation have been done. There may be a slight chance of success in opposing this project. Scientific studies by governmental institutes are backing our cause and several politicians are more and more hesitative. The northern branch of the line has been cancelled for some time by the transport minister, which has lead two major political parties, including one in government to reconsider the project completely. Of course we're not trusting politicians to do the work for us, so our focus is still on direct action and increasing the costs of the project, already twice as much as calculated three years ago... We would like to invite more people to come and live in the pittoresk Betuweline farms. As much as being there can help us considerably already.
You will find directions to squats in Meteren and Zetten-Andelst and some phonenumbers on the website at http://groenfr.huizen.dds.nl.
groenfront