Hamburg : sabotaging the freight traffic of one of Europe’s largest ports.

[On the night of Thursday September 7 to Friday September 8, a triple sabotage attack was carried out on the rail freight traffic of one of Europe’s largest ports (Hamburg ranks just behind Rotterdam and Antwerp in terms of tonnage). At around 2.40 a.m., a cable fire was reported on the rail bypass north of the city, at Deelwisch Street. Then at around 3 a.m., a second fire was reported to the southeast on a railroad line in the Walter-Rudolphi-Weg area of Allermöhe, and finally a third at around 3.40 a.m. directly on the Hamburger Hafenbahn line at Heykenaukamp. In each case, signalling and communication cables located in shafts along the tracks were destroyed by the arson attacks.

As well as impacting container train traffic to and from the Port, the sabotage also affected long-distance passenger trains, particularly between Germany’s two largest cities (Hamburg and Berlin), where on Friday 11 trains were completely cancelled, 17 were partially cancelled and 21 were significantly delayed. Passenger rail traffic will not return to normal until Sunday, and needless to say, this sabotage has caused an outcry across the Rhine from the authorities, with Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing, for example, castigating “climate extremists” (Klimaextremisten) who “have lowered their inhibition threshold yet again” with “such attacks, which constitute a form of terrorism”.
Below is a translation from the German of the communique issued on the same day (September 8) on de.indymedia].

Switch Off! Decentralized sabotage of capitalist infrastructure in Hamburg

On the night of September 7, we sabotaged arteries of the capitalist infrastructure in Hamburg. We chose a number of commodity transport hotspots, and in this case decided to limit ourselves to sections not used for passenger transport. A few liters of gasoline in the cable shafts along the rails should result in breakdowns or traffic jams for as long as possible in the transport of raw materials obtained, for example, through neo-colonial exploitation and planet-destroying extractivism.

Every year, millions of tonnes of goods and raw materials are transhipped in Hamburg, increasing the wealth of exploiters in the global North at the expense of the so-called global South. We wanted to put a real stop to this machinery. At the same time, we’re also showing our solidarity with communities affected by industrial destruction around the world, and with those who find themselves behind bars for fighting against capitalism and the state. We are also joining the growing struggle against the ‘Tren Maya’ infrastructure project in Mexico, involving German companies such as Deutsche Bahn, whose infrastructure seems to us an appropriate target for showing our solidarity here too.

The port railroad south of Hamburg, the rails at the DUSS terminal in Billwerder and the northern route of the freight bypass railroad were sabotaged. These are all critical infrastructures for the transshipment of goods from ship to rail, from rail to road, and for the redistribution of raw materials and commodities into and out of the country.

The Hamburg Port Authority (HPA) railroad is the only connection to the regular rail network for various parts of the Port of Hamburg. One example is the interconnection with the port of Sandau and the adjacent Hansaport terminal. In this terminal, designed for bulk goods, several million tons of coal and iron ore are transshipped every year before being transported to various coal-fired power plants or steelworks, such as Salzgitter AG. 70% of this transport is carried out by rail. It is well known that steel production is extremely harmful to the climate, and that the supply of ore is linked to neo-colonial mining conditions. The same applies to coal from Colombia, for example, or to oil imported at the oil port. With fossil fuels imported into the port of Hamburg, energy companies like others make billions in sales by profiting from crises and environmental destruction.

In addition, the Container Terminal Burchardkai (CHB) – the largest owned by the logistics and transport company HHLA – and the huge Europort Terminal are also linked by the port railroad. Around 50 million tonnes of goods are currently transported every year via the Port of Hamburg’s rail line. Of course, this also includes parts for the armaments industry and nuclear-related shipments. Usually, a freight train runs here every ten minutes, day and night. Last summer, the section in question was already blocked for a few hours as part of a climate camp, and partially covered with ballast.

The transshipment terminal of Deutsche Bahn’s DUSS (Deutsche Umschlaggesellschaft Schiene – Straße, which handles rail-road transshipment) is the largest transshipment terminal in northern Germany. Every year, several hundred thousand containers and other loading units are transferred from trains to trucks and vice versa. Strategically located and well-connected to the Hamburg freeway and rail freight line, the terminal is an important link in the supply chain for a wide variety of export and import goods. All kinds of goods are loaded here for onward transport to European or Asian countries, including of course parts for the arms industry, cars or fast-fashion clothing.

The aim of the Hamburg bypass is to route freight traffic via the northern or southern outskirts of Hamburg, in order to reduce interference with passenger traffic on the connecting line. We decided to attack here, as this is a bottleneck in Hamburg’s rail network.

Hamburg is a capitalist metropolis where numerous logistics chains converge. If we want to do away with capitalism, why not attack the infrastructure that supports it here? With the simplest possible means, which sometimes have surprisingly large impacts on a network that can hardly be protected everywhere? We see sabotage as a real attack on the system of exploitation, as an experiment but also as a proposal to intensify local struggles against neo-colonialism and climate destruction.

Global capitalism will continue to destroy this planet, whether with fossil fuels or with the new “green” exploitation of the earth. It will continue to defend the injustice of its wealth with guns and barbed wire against the excluded. As revolutionaries, we see it as our responsibility to attack the wealth of the global North. We must sabotage the advance of capitalist industry at its heart, wherever possible.

Fight the system of destruction!

via:sansnom
Translated by Act for freedom now!