If you are lucky, as your plane touches down you may be able to catch a glimpse from your window of a large homemade sign declaring, in Japanese, “Against Narita Airport”. Omotenashi indeed.
The protest movement against Narita Airport is almost moribund for two obvious reasons: despite fierce opposition and mammoth delays and even fatalities, the airport was eventually finished and opened, and isn’t going anywhere; and the inevitable process of mortality is setting in and the original activists and farmers are slowly disappearing.
Instead, the remains of the protest movement, which is often referred to as the Sanrizuka movement after the area where many of the affected villages were located, continues on with a primary focus on stopping further expansion of the airport in the form of the long-anticipated third runway. Much of this manifests as petitions, various suits and trials, and regular rallies and marches. In particular, the…
An article about resistance to eviction from their homes and productive agricultural land for a new airport in Java, Indonesia, has been published by The Ecologist online magazine: Indonesia: Villagers resist eviction for 50 sq.km ‘aeropolis’ / Airport city on their land. Ten villages, and a vast area of farmland, have already been wiped from the map for Kertajati Airport, which is currently under construction. But Sukamulya village remains. Residents have sustained their resistance to displacement for the airport for over 12 years, since the project was first mooted in 2004. The Front Perjuangan Rakyat Sukamulya (FPRS) was formed to resist eviction for the airport.
Sukamulya villagers have blocked officials from measuring land for Kertajati Airport on many occasions. Starting in August 2016 a series of attempts to measure the land were successful blocked by residents. But on 17th November 2016, when people had gathered yet again to protect their farmland, 2,000 police rushed onto the fields to disperse them and enforce the land measurement. Twelve protesters were injured and the barbaric eviction attempt has been widely condemned by Indonesian human rights organizations and NGOs. Land rights and agrarian reform NGO Konsorsium Pembaruan Agraria (KPA) highlighted resistance against Kertajati Airport as one of Indonesia’s key land rights struggles.
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A video by AGRA Indonesia Alliance of Agrarian Reform Movement/Aliansi Gerakan Reforma Agraria shows the firing of teargas at Sukamulya residents attempting to defend their land and resist eviction.
If development of the project goes ahead as planned Kertajati Airport will be the starting point for an even larger development, an aerotropolis. An Aerocity adjoining the airport site is planned. In total, 50 square kilometres of land, predominantly productive farmland, has been earmarked for Kertajati aerotropolis: 1,800 hectares for the airport and 3,200 hectares for the Aerocity.
“The project of the NAICM will lead to water shortage” Vandana Shiva in Atenco
Desinformémonos
Mexico City. 14 August 2016. “At some point it will lead to a water shortage” said Vandana Shiva and Sebastiao Pinheiro during their visit to Atenco yesterday. With members of the Peoples Front in Defence of Land (FPDT) they toured the lands of Atenco that the government intends to dispossess in order to be part of the new airport in Mexico City (NAICM). They arrived early in the camp that is located in the area where they intend to build one of the access roads.
Vandana, winner of the alternative Nobel prize for the environment, asked Mexicans not to allow life to be exterminated and to come to support the movement of the FPDT and all those who oppose the construction of the airport in these lands.
Meanwhile, members of the FPDT told the environmentalists that in these lands they grow crops of pumpkins, olives, corn…
antiaero.org 