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The German government tried everything it could to ensure a smooth transport of
six casks of high-level radioactive waste to the small city of Ahaus, in the
northwest corner of the country near the Dutch border.
Demonstrations within 500 meters (about 1,600 feet) of the railroad tracks were outlawed. The shipment began six days early, with the actual date known only to four government officials, in an effort to keep down the protestors' numbers.
Tens of thousands of police were called in and occupied the city-probably more police than residents. Demonstrators' campsites-set up on the land of local farmers, who had invited the outsiders--were attacked and closed, contrary to the German Constitution.
Townspeople whose backyards fronted the railroad tracks
were forced to leave their homes, with fencing put up to keep people from
entering the homes or yards. Trains to the area were halted, so were buses;
cars without local license plates were denied entrance to the region: on
Friday morning, March 20, 1998, to get to Ahaus meant getting dropped off
beyond police barricades and walking at least six miles.
What the German government succeeded in doing was arresting
nearly 1,000 people, tear-gassing others, spraying more with water cannons,
injuring a dozen or so people, indirectly causing the death of one policeman
and, ultimately, proving that it takes a police state to move radioactive
waste casks.
Ahaus, Germany, March 1998
Ahaus is an apparently fairly prosperous, conservative
town. There are no urban slums, no tenements. The graffitti that covers
the industrial cities to the South isn't there. The air is clean, so are
the streets. Downtown is a pedestrian mall with lots of small stores, a
few bars and coffee shops. A castle with typical and well-maintained park-like
grounds centers the city. The railway-the essential link to the outside-runs
directly through the center of town. Everything is neat and orderly, until
this week.
The police begin moving in at the beginning of the week, at first
hundreds, then thousands. They avoid the downtown shopping zone, but are at
every other intersection. By Friday, they may outnumber the residents. They
are everywhere, down every side street, their vans and trucks and water cannons
and armored personnel carriers parked along quiet tree-lined streets, blocking
parking spaces and creating an atmosphere of foreboding. They hold their helmets
and shields and batons at their sides; tear gas canisters on their belts; many
carry guns. They are ready for war; what they may not realize is that they are
creating the war, establishing the war zone, defining life in the nuclear age.
 By the end of Friday, the police, and by extension the
German government, have succeeded in two things: moving the six waste casks
to an "interim" storage site just about a mile and a half from the city
center and causing the people of Ahaus to leave their homes and jeer and
yell at the sons and daughters of Germany who joined the police to fight crime and protect people, but who are now forced to defend the indefensible.
There are many in Ahaus who remember the last German police state,
and surely those memories are swirling through their minds as they see the thousands
of green-jacketed and helmeted police occupy their city, as well as the hundreds
of elite riot troops in black Darth-Vaderish leather and impact-resistant plastic
gear, looking both fearsome and as if they should be guests at a bizarre Halloween
party.
 A few months ago, the prospect of becoming home to CASTORs, the German high-level waste casks, was not enough to bring these people to protest. After all, there are already some 300 casks of radioactive waste at the Ahaus site-the remnants of a decommissioned experimental thorium
reactor.
The German environmental movement made what some consider a Faustian bargain-they would accept that the waste from the reactor be moved to Ahaus in exchange for the reactor's dismantlement. At the time, some apparently warned about more and more deadly transports in the future, but most seemed convinced that decommissioning the reactor was more important.
But each CASTOR cask, which carries 20,000 pounds of high-level
commercial reactor waste, holds more radioactivity than all 300 existing
casks at Ahaus combined.
So a few months ago, a local pastor finally spoke out
against the dump, and the targeting of Ahaus for high-level waste transport.
He took his congregation on a "Sunday Walk" through town to protest the
upcoming shipments, and began repeating the walks every Sunday. That was
the sanction this religious city needed; by Sunday, March 15, 1998, 5,000
people had joined in the largest Sunday Walk to date.
It is a normal day in Ahaus
Guido, an urban transportation planner, and I decide we're
on the wrong side of the tracks. On the other side is downtown Ahaus, and
thousands of protestors. On our side, there are hundreds more protestors,
more safety, but little activity. We set out to cross the tracks, which
are guarded as far as the eye can see by hundreds of police.
We walk up one street, but after 1/2 mile, we realize
this is the wrong street; we've reached the very heavily-guarded police
station. The police make it clear that we're welcome to walk no further.
We retrace our steps and go up another street. About 11/2
miles up, we turn left towards the tracks, and the police at the intersection
don't stop us.
But when we reach the tracks, a policeman stops us. He
and Guido engage in small talk. Then Guido turns to me and says that the
policeman wants to know what people in the U.S. think about nuclear power.
I tell him that the polls I've seen show that most people are against construction
of new reactors, but are more divided on whether we should close existing
reactors. He asks about waste transportation policy here, and other nuclear
issues. He says that he is against nuclear power and that, if he didn't
have to work today as a policeman, he would be in the streets with us.
I tell him not to stand too close to the casks when they
pass by him later that day. He points to his pocket and says he has been
issued a radiation monitor, but doesn't know what good that will do for
him. He says that the police are told their clothing will protect them
from the casks, but he doesn't believe it and he adds that most police
he knows don't believe it either. The police union is trying to stop the
shipments, he says.
Guido and I decide that maybe we don't want to cross the
tracks and begin to go back the way we came. Nope, says our friendly policeman,
you can't go back that way. Someone made a mistake and it is illegal for
you to be where you are (we are standing on the tracks), you have to go
the other direction.
So we do. We pass by houses forcibly vacated by the police-their
residents had the misfortune of living along the tracks, so the police
kicked them out of their homes. Where their children had played, there
is now fencing and cops with riot sticks and helmets. After a 1/2 mile,
we reach another police barricade, this one preventing us from entering
downtown.
We don't plan to get stuck here on the outskirts of town,
so we turn the other direction, go through a back yard, and cross a different,
unguarded rail track (this one the casks won't be going on). We're immediately
stopped by two police, who want to arrest us, saying that it is against
the law to cross train tracks in Germany except at a designated crossing
(of course, that is blocked off by several dozen cops).
Guido replies that, well, it is not a normal day, so we
thought it would be ok. One of the police replies, "yes, it is a normal
day." We laugh, and say, "there are not 20,000 police in Ahaus on a normal
day." The policeman replies, "since there are 20,000 police here, perhaps
you should not illegally cross the tracks," but lets us go.
We reach downtown Ahaus, the only area within miles that
is police-free. Hundreds of people wander up and down the streets. Most
stores are closed, only a few coffee shops are open to feed the multitudes.
Outside the main street storefront offices of the local activist group,
the Burger-Initiative, dozens of people congregate to get the latest information.
Guido and I decide that coffee is in order, the casks
won't arrive for hours, so we enter a crowded place. A local rock radio
station is playing in the background. Every few minutes, the station interrupts
a song to deliver the latest news on the casks: they are now 150 kilometers
away, but facing 50 demonstrators on the tracks. Cheers meet each update.
The casks began their journey yesterday afternoon, and are moving very
slowly, with demonstrators nearly every step of the way.
Later, we learn that during one stretch where there are
no demonstrators, a 27-year old policeman, a border guard called in to
supplement the police forces, was killed by a train running ahead of the
cask train. There is no explanation how this happened. The purpose of the
first train was to spot any potential problems with the track, any potential
saboteurs. But aside from one flare-up in the college town of Goettingen,
the violence is all on the side of the police.
Throughout the 250-odyssey of the casks, there are protests.
At the beginning, where three casks leave the reactor site at Neckarwesthein
in southern Germany by truck before being transferred to rail, an activist
has blocked the road with an old station wagon, and has somehow attached
himself to it in such a way that the police can't remove him. Two dozen
police finally just pick up the car, demonstrator attached, and move it
to the side of the road.
Further up, Greenpeace activists have figured out a way
to lock themselves to the rail tracks, and the police can't get them off.
The police finally just take up the entire section of track, and lay down
a new one. More delays, but the casks move northward, ever so slowly...
7,000 people in 24 hours
Meanwhile, in Ahaus, despite the police blockades of roads and
rail, demonstrators continue to pour into the city. Local residents add to the
numbers-according to one report, only 30 of 180 teachers in the city even came
to work on Friday; the rest are at the barricades. By mid-afternoon, there are
some 7,000 protestors in and around Ahaus.
 The original plan was well-known. The casks were scheduled
to be shipped on Wednesday, March 25. A large rally was planned for the
nearby city of Munster on Saturday, March 21. From there, a caravan would
go to Ahaus, where people would move to one of nine campsites. More people
would arrive during the subsequent days-maybe 20,000 or more would be there
by Wednesday.
But Franz Josef-Kniola, the Interior Minister for the
local Nordrhein-Westfalen state, had a different idea. As he later told
newspapers, he ordered the shipment several days early to try to keep the
number of demonstrators as low as possible. He overruled local police officials,
who wanted to accommodate the demonstrations (the regional police chief,
nominally in charge, is a member of the Green Party), and got a court ruling
banning demonstrations throughout the region. He told residents of Ahaus
that thousands of "violent and chaotic" demonstrators were coming to destroy
their city. He ordered all but one of the campsites cleared and destroyed.
None of it worked.
Instead, on less than 24 hours notice, some 7,000 protestors
had arrived in Ahaus. And instead of obliging the ban on demonstrations,
mid-afternoon found hundreds of them sitting on the railway forming a 1/4
mile long human barricade to the casks.
It was "chaotic" and Kniola and the 20,000 police in Ahaus
(10,000 more protected the casks in the rest of Germany) succeeded in making
things disorganized, but they didn't succeed in stopping the demonstrations.
By late afternoon, with the casks less than 50 miles away,
the police decided to clear the tracks. Hundreds of police moved in, water
cannons moved in, and the elite troops in black moved in (never have the
hallucinatory visions of "jack-booted thugs" of the U.S. ultra-right become
more real).
The police grabbed people by their necks, by their ears, by their
hair and systematically took them off the tracks, but just a few feet away.
Within an hour, they had cleared the tracks, and sent several people to the
Red Cross.
That wasn't enough for them. Several hundred people were standing on nearby hillsides. The police opened up with water cannons to force the people off the hills. That didn't work. So still more police were brought in, hundreds now.  And suddenly they charged up the hillside on the opposite side of the track, pushing and shoving and throwing people, who had done nothing more threatening than an occasional chant, off the side of the hill.
The water cannons now moved toward us on the other side
of the track. In a comical moment, the cannons pointed the wrong way and
began spraying the police who had just taken the hillside on the other
side, while the police pointed toward us, shaking their heads. Then the
cannons turned around and began spraying us. Still more police moved in;
there are probably 500 or more in this small area now. To my right, another
hillside, and the police charge again. As they throw the people down the
hill on the other side, other water cannons open up on them, full force.
 Then, just in front of me, the police begin hitting people with
their fists, knocking them down, trampling them. I take a picture of one cop
who has been particularly brutal, a flashbulb in his face, just to be sure he
knows people are watching. The police usually turn their faces when a camera
is present, but he doesn't have time.
There is a pond just behind us, and only mud in between. There
is really no place to go. But the police suddenly charge us anyway, people fall
down in the mud, the police step on them. A few rocks and sticks are thrown,
but the sudden violence is on the police, their faces are in rage. More water
cannons, eight police helicopters fly low overhead, the noise is deafening.
High-intensity police lights cast an eerie glow over the cloudy late-afternoon
repression. The entire thing is surreal-we were all at least 10 yards from the
tracks to begin with, now we're 30 yards, so what? The Red Cross is very busy.
Behind us are dozens of Ahaus residents; they have come
out of their homes to see what is happening. They're on bicycles, they're
brought dogs, children, friends, and their horrified faces show the reality
of the police state more than anyone could ever say in words.
The casks are nearly here now. I walk back toward the
center of town, get lost, and find myself on a residential street next
to the tracks. Dozens of police stand between a bicycle path and the tracks.
The people of the neighborhood have gathered to watch the casks go by.
Finally, it comes: a train more than a 1/3 mile long moving
at about five miles an hour. First are five cars full of police, then the
first cask. I have a radiation monitor, the first one shows no increase
in background radiation whatsoever. Then comes more cars of police, and
the second cask-the monitor quickly registers 10 times background levels--and
then the rest of the train and casks. Each cask sends the radiation monitor
soaring, even at 30 yards. The police, of course, are much closer. Behind
the train are literally hundreds of riot-clad police, running along; I
don't know how long they've been running, but they must be tired....
The people of Ahaus scream at them, boo, jeer. They are
all, at least those around me now, middle-aged or older. The police look
like their sons and daughters, they look chagrined and embarrassed, like
kids caught smoking behind the barn.
Later that night, the casks passed by more than an hour
ago, hundreds of protestors, mostly young people, many drinking beer and
getting ready to unwind after the day gather near the still heavily-guarded
train station in downtown Ahaus about a mile away. The main street is still
closed to traffic while some of the police try to organize to leave the
area. The protestors taunt them, waving good-bye, yelling. The police,
hundreds of them as well, suddenly turn and charge, sending people scattering
for blocks.
The kids regroup, and this time they attack the police
with rocks, bottles, full beer cans. TV cameras and their lights appear.
Police lights turn on; water cannons are moved up and spray the area full
force. More bottles fly. A few people shout "keine gewelte," ("no violence")
to little avail. But it ends fairly quickly, few on either side really
want to fight.
I worry that the TV news will emphasize that brief but
dramatic confrontation instead of the reality of the day, which was the
reality of the police state.
Of course, since there are still no trains or buses out
of Ahaus, and I have no sleeping bag or other gear, I have no place to
stay, so I may not see the news anyway. Another couple of miles walking
and I find a small hotel-no rooms, the media has taken it over. Retrace
my steps back, even past the train station, and I find a cab station, where
they find a hotel two miles away and offer to take me there. I readily
accept.
So I do see the late news, and they lead with the nighttime
confrontation, but it gets short play. The big news of the day I apparently
missed: a very famous German rock band called Toten Hosen (means "Dead
Pants," literally) had come downtown on a flatbed truck earlier in the
day and started performing. They locked the doors to the cab of the truck,
apparently the engine was needed to run to power the electricity for the
amplifiers. And the police went nuts, the TV news highlights show the police
using their clubs to smash the windows and headlights of the truck, while
the band plays on. Some 150 people were then arrested. So much for making
friends among young people...
Meanwhile, the news also reports that four soccer games
were cancelled by the police that day, and shows angry soccer fans-not
at the demonstrators, but at the police....
The next day, an editorial cartoon in a leading newspaper
shows a steam engine pulling a waste cask. Coming out of the engine's smokestack
is not smoke, but money. Once again, the German government has spent tens
of millions of dollars, only to prove that a "successful" radioactive waste
transport means turning a large area of northern Germany into a virtual
war zone. Despite all their tactics, they couldn't keep the demonstrators
away. Despite all their violence, they couldn't stop an essentially non-violent
movement.
That night, I join with a group of local working people
in the hotel bar. I ask what they think about their city becoming a dumpsite.
They tell me that 20 years ago, their parents agreed to allow Ahaus to
become such a site, and in return they have received many benefits from
the government. Now that the real waste is finally coming, they think,
it would be unfair for them to say no, we will drop this agreement. Still,
they worry-a lot. They worry because they are beginning to believe that
this "temporary" site will become permanent. They worry about their children.
They worry about their lives.
One of them is a fireman, he tells me he has been trained
"a little" to cope with an emergency at the site. He is equipped with a
radiation monitor. He admits he wouldn't really know what to do if he were
called in for a real emergency.
They say they are not opposed to the demonstrations, but
aren't actively supporting them either. They're astonished when I tell
them we have not begun moving high-level waste in the U.S. and that the
issue remains controversial; they thought they were accepting what other
countries already do.
The Atomic Police State
The next day, about 30 miles south in Munster, what was
planned to be the opening rally of a week of activities becomes a closing
event instead. More than 12,000 people march through the busy commercial
area of this small city. The police presence is extremely heavy; they lead
the march, they follow the march, they walk alongside the march. They have
blocked off most of downtown Munster for the event and, again, stand at
every intersection. The local people again express their resentment, many
join in the march. They can't understand why the police are so prevalent.
While a few hundred "Autonomen" (anarchists in black hoods and scarves)
are very evident, so are hundreds of children, middle-aged couples and
families, groups like Pax Christi and Greenpeace, politicians and a full
cross-section of northern German life. After the march there is a rally
with speakers carried live on national TV. All is peaceful.
Ahaus and this section of northern Germany are not like
Gorleben, where last year's waste transports brought out the largest anti-nuclear
demonstrations in more than a decade, and where local farmers and townspeople
lead the opposition. Organizing in the Gorleben region, in the State called
the Wendland, has been going on for 20 years. I don't understand the hatred
the police have for people from the Wendland until I am on a bus back to
Munster from Ahaus. We encounter a huge traffic jam: not because of an
accident or too many vehicles, but because the police are pulling over
every vehicle with a license plate from the Wendland region and stripping
their vehicles. It is pure harassment; people on my bus from the region
say it is routine; cars from the Wendland are always stopped and searched.
In Ahaus,
despite a few mild protests over the years, there has been essentially no organizing
until the past few months. Yet these transports brought about the same type
of overt repression, the same large demonstrations, the same chaos as at Gorleben.
Talking to people, I find very few who were actually at Gorleben last year.
This is not just a movement which travels around looking for police to bother
and casks to block; this is a broad-based movement which has decided, across
the nation, to make these shipments so expensive, so impossible, that they must
stop, and the reactors that produce this waste must close.
At Gorleben, this appears to have worked. But the expense
is not just monetary, it is political. The Social Democrats are seriously
challenging the ruling Christian Democrats in Fall elections. The Social
Democrats new standard bearer Gerhard Schroeder is from northern Germany,
not far from Wendland. He is in the Bill Clinton/Tony Blair mode: he doesn't
seem to have any ideological interest in stopping the transports, but he
has a clear political interest in doing so. If all goes as planned, he
will have to make a coalition government with the Greens. And he needs
his region to be solidly behind him, so he stopped any more shipments to
Gorleben-at least before the elections. The fact is, the government can't
afford them anyway.
And now, the government may not be able to afford shipments
to Ahaus. The resistance was so much greater than they thought, even with
every tactic, legal and barely legal, they could come up with.
With a police state, the German government proved it can
move radioactive waste casks and keep the reactors running. But even with
a police state, the government proved this only at a price that it cannot
maintain.
 The
same will be true in the U.S. There is no doubt that, if the nuclear industry's
Mobile Chernobyl concept is approved by Congress, and waste transport begins,
that that transport can be carried out. Organizations across the country already
are mobilizing to stop the shipments, which are still years away. We don't have
20 years of organizing, a la Gorleben, but we do have several years. And it
will require a police state to move the casks, not just over 250 miles, but
over 2,500 miles. It is simply not possible to do this at a cost-both human
and economic-that our country can ever maintain.
Those who support the concept of moving waste to an "interim"
dump without closing the reactors-and those are really the underlying issues
in Germany as well as the U.S.-would do well to reconsider their insistence
on attempting to force this transport on the American people. Simply put,
the people of Gorleben, of Ahaus, across the U.S., are not stupid; they
understand what this is about: radioactive waste transport to "interim"
sites is for the convenience of the nuclear power industry, which wants
to make more waste that they can't find a permanent solution for, and that
threatens people at the end of the route, at the beginning of the route,
and at every mile along the route.
Yes, it is possible to move radioactive waste wherever
a determined government wants to move it. But it is not possible to move
it without creating an untenable reality: it takes a police state to move
a radioactive waste cask, and neither Germany nor the U.S. are prepared
for the inevitable repercussions. --Michael Mariotte, March 27, 1998
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