Bogoni Uprising  

Shell really does know how to attract bad publicity. Here's a piece about them fighting some downtrodden Irish villagers in the "Battle of the bog".

It began as a hopeless mismatch: a handful of villagers in remote north-west Mayo taking on the multinational Shell. But the Battle of the Bog has turned into one of the biggest protests against Shell in Europe after five villagers were jailed for refusing the company access to their land because they feared a proposed gas pipeline was unsafe.

Subsistence farmers from Rossport accuse Shell of turning them into "human guinea pigs" by building a £600m high-pressure gas pipeline near their homes.

While the men and women stood on their land and refused the company entry until their safety concerns were met, the Celtic Tiger Ireland looked the other way. But when Shell took five villagers to the high court in Dublin and saw them jailed "indefinitely" for obstructing the company's work, the country was outraged.

Now the Bogoni - named after the Ogoni people who fought Shell in Nigeria - have spent 18 days in jail and seen their support swell. Thousands of people have gathered at demonstrations, including the novelist Jennifer Johnston.

Hundreds more have picketed garages, signed petitions and urged a petrol boycott. Shell has agreed to temporarily suspend work in north Mayo, where crowds were protesting every day and the government has ordered a health and safety review of the proposed pipeline. But the jailed men refuse to back down.

Three are small-scale farmers, eking what living they can from poor-quality peaty land in Rossport in the Bog of Erris.

Two are retired schoolteachers, including a pensioner who has had a triple heart bypass. They represent the Gaelic-speaking community decimated by poverty and emigration, which the government has vowed to protect. According to their MP, they are "decent people" with no previous criminal records.

Jerry Cowley, the independent MP for Mayo, said: "The small man is being trampled into the ground."

Michael Ring of Fine Gael said Ireland was now living in a "dictatorship within a democracy".