50,000 protest against N-plant

Press, 2 March 1981, Page 8

50,000 protest against N-plant

NZPA-Reuter Brokdorf,

W. Germany Anti-nuclear demonstrators fought a two-hour running battle with the police on' Saturday before being driven off by giant water cannon and baton charges. About 80 demonstrators and 37 policemen were reported ■to be injured, but local authorities said the violence had been less extensive than: they had feared when they outlawed the protest last week. The demonstration was held near the building site of a controversial atomic power station at Brokdorf, 50km north-west of Hamburg. '■ It provoked one’ of the biggest security actions, in West German history. Informed sources. said about 15,000 men were drafted in from all over the country. They included several companies of the elite para-mili-tary Federal Border Guards. Violence erunted when a small group of the largely peaceful crowd of about 50,000 demonstrators set fire to grass outside the nuclear compound. Protesters and security forces then traded stones for tear-gas before the demonstration; was driven off into adjacent marshland. ■ ? , ' 3 At least seven demonstrators were arrested. '.’,/For the Chancellor (Mr Helmut Schmidt), whose Social Democratic .. Party’s youth movement , helped stage the march, the violence could have caused embarrassment ' ' Mr Schmidt; has -pressed for an expansion of nuclear power.; to out West Gerheavy , oil-import costs,, but there is strong anti-nuclear .feeling in his party. Brokdorf has become both a test of his determination and a symbol of revolt to those who believe that the 'jtiSks of producing nuclear energy, are too dangerous. ? Started in 1976, the Brokdorf station has been constantly delaved by lawsuits from ecologists and political indecision. .The site is still largely barren and even “ if work. resumes as blanned this month the 1300;MW reactor will not come on steam until 1987,