Airport runway protest fails

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32541, 26 February 1971, Page 9

Airport runway protest fails

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) NARITA (Japan), February 25. Riot police arrested 49 demonstrators today during an attempt by farmers and Left-wing students to stop the expansion of Tokyo’s second international airport.

Five policemen and one reporter were injured when the police stormed fortified positions held by several thousand protesters trying to stop 1500 square yards of land needed to complete the airport project being forcibly taken over.

Students guarded their tent hospital and refused to disclose details of their casualties in the one brief clash of the morning. Police captured 77 weapons, mainly bamboo staves, and counted five women among the detainees. It was the first time in four days of confrontation that the riot police had been used. About 3000 men had been held in reserve but were not used in line with a Gbv-

eminent decision to avoid bloodshed if possible. Inside a ring of police, airport officials moved down into a gully—the centre of resistance—to begin the land take-over. But they stopped when the defenders set fire to a line of rubber tyres immediately in front of the make-shift stockOfficials said that telephone lines out of the area were cut during the night, isolating the construction site headquarters. The farmers, unwilling to give up their land, and several thousand student supporters said that they would resist with violence any attempts to take over the area needed to complete the main runway.