SYDNEY (Reuters) – Fifty climate change activists were charged with an illegal protest near Australia’s biggest coal export port on Sunday after protesters boarded a coal train.
New South Wales state police said 47 activists had been charged with “rail corridor offences”, two with malicious damage and one with assaulting a security guard in connection with the “protest activity illegal’ near Newcastle Harbour, some 170 km (105 miles) from the state capital Sydney.
Climate activist group Rising Tide, which claimed responsibility for the protest, said the arrests were made when people were “occupying the train”.
“Twenty of the group crossed the train and used shovels to unload the coal from the loaded wagons,” she said in a statement. Police said 14 activists had boarded a train carriage in a railway corridor in the suburb of Sandgate.
Climate change is a divisive issue in Australia, the world’s largest coal exporter.
The centre-left Labor government does not support a ban on all new fossil fuel projects. It sees reforming the “safeguard mechanism” laws as essential to its pledge to cut emissions by 43% by 2030 in a country that ranks as one of the world’s biggest carbon emitters per capita. the world.
The Port of Newcastle is the largest bulk shipping port on Australia’s east coast and the nation’s largest coal export terminal, according to the New South Wales government Wales.
The protest group uploaded an image on Twitter showing protesters in front of and on top of a coal train. A banner on the train read “‘Survival Guide for Humanity’: no new coal”.
The group tweeted that it had “stopped coal” at the port and was asking the Labor Party to “immediately cancel all new coal projects”.
A Port of Newcastle spokesman said shipping operations were operating as normal on Sunday.
(Reporting by Sam McKeith in Sydney; Editing by William Mallard)
