New Protests Erupt Against Removal of Olive Trees for TAP Pipeline

Following months of protests against the removal of up to 10,000 ancient olive trees to make way for the con­tro­ver­sial Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), res­i­dents in the Puglian town of Melendugno woke up on November 13^th to find their town in lock­down after police imple­mented a ​“red zone” overnight.

Nobody has access to this zone. People liv­ing there are com­pletely iso­lated.- Sabina Giese

Streets and olive farms had been cor­doned off with barbed-wire fences and con­crete bar­ri­ers and land own­ers within the red zone found they were required to obtain spe­cial per­mits to enter while every­one else was pro­hib­ited. Security patrols were brought in to con­trol the area and allegedly refused access to labor­ers, needed to har­vest the olives within the zone.

Using a law which dates back to 1931, ​“Ordinance Decreto Regio (Royal Decree) No 773,” offi­cials in Lecce placed the area sur­round­ing the TAP con­struc­tion site under police con­trol. Some of Melendugno’s res­i­dents were expelled and they may be denied access to the area for up to three years. Damage to prop­er­ties sus­tained dur­ing the encroach­ment had also been reported.

Local res­i­dent, Sabina Giese told the Olive Oil Times, ​“We are stopped every time and asked for doc­u­ments from the police. People liv­ing in the red zone have access to their homes with a spe­cial pass given by the police depart­ment but can­not host any friend or friends of their chil­dren in their homes. Nobody has access to this zone. People liv­ing there are com­pletely iso­lated.”

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Italian author­i­ties resort to Mussolini-era law to put local com­mu­nity under mil­i­tary lock­down + force through con­struc­tion of gas pipeline https://t.co/fh5qLTew5Z Reject fund­ing this unde­mo­c­ra­tic fos­sil fuel mad­ness @EIB#NoTAPpic.twitter.com/KPl2M298cY

— Melanie Mattauch (@MelMattauch) December 1, 2017

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Giese added, ​“Nobody can access the red-zone with­out the autho­riza­tion of TAP, not even the jour­nal­ists. They have to ask TAP to get into the zone and only TAP can ask the police for autho­riza­tion. Once the jour­nal­ists enter the zone, they are escorted like a group of tourists into the area while all work is sus­pended in the mean­time.”

According to Giese locals are angry that tax­pay­ers’ money is being spent on police pro­tec­tion for TAP per­son­nel and vehi­cles, despite the con­sor­tium hand­ing out pay­ments of €10,000 each to over 140 res­i­dents in an attempt to halt the protests.

Lisa Givert, TAP’s Head of Communications told Olive Oil Times, ​“TAP can­not com­ment on mat­ters per­tain­ing to the juris­dic­tion of the Italian law enforce­ment agen­cies or other such com­pe­tent author­i­ties. We under­stand how­ever that they have a respon­si­bil­ity to uphold law and order, and main­tain a peace­ful envi­ron­ment in which work can con­tinue in a calm, safe and peace­ful man­ner for all.”

Givert added, ​“Several peo­ple (TAP work­ers, etc.) had been attacked dur­ing the vio­lent protests for mov­ing the first batch of olive trees in the first half of 2017. Also, TAP and its con­trac­tors have been the tar­get of sev­eral acts of van­dal­ism. Protesters have also dam­aged the ancient stone walls, part of Puglia’s cul­tural and his­tor­i­cal her­itage and destroyed the nets pro­tect­ing the olive trees against the spread of the Xylella fas­tidiosa bac­terium.”

As new ten­sions mounted over the red zone, protests erupted once again and demon­stra­tors against TAP threw eggs at police sta­tioned out­side a con­fer­ence on energy and pipelines in Lecce on November 20^th.

Work on the TAP was halted in April when The Lazio Regional Administrative Court (TAR) over­turned the Italian government’s autho­riza­tion to relo­cate the trees. In July, clashes between pro­test­ers and police over the removal of 42 trees includ­ing ​‘mon­u­men­tal olive trees’ resulted in the trees’ removal being delayed until November when their six-month growth spurt was fin­ished.

The €4.5 bil­lion TAP pipeline which was approved in 2015 is the final leg of the Southern Gas Corridor that will trans­port Asian gas to Europe. The pipeline was given the go-ahead under the pro­vi­sion that olive trees along its route were trans­planted while the work took place and even­tu­ally returned to their orig­i­nal sites.

TAP was sched­uled to deliver its first gas to Italy by 2020 reduc­ing the EU’s depen­dence on Russian energy.

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• The Independent


• ANSA