COPENHAGEN, DENMARK (AP) – Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre met with Indigenous Sami reindeer herders yesterday after over a week of protests against wind farms that activists said endanger their way of life, and has acknowledged that there are “ongoing human rights violations”.
At the same time, the activists, many teenagers, said they would pause their blockade of the entrances of several government ministries in Oslo, Norway’s capital, because the government made a public apology.
“We need a pause. We are stopping now,” activist Ella Marie Hætta Isaksen said.
“We are ready to restart the actions if we deem it necessary.”
The activists will gather one last time outside the royal palace but stressed they will not block access as the Norwegian government attends the regular briefing of the Norwegian monarch, which is a formality.
After a breakfast meeting with the Sami herders, Gahr Støre said “there is an ongoing violation of human rights”.
“The reindeer owners are not allowed to exercise their culture in line with the traditions,” he said, adding the aim of the morning meeting ”was to repeat the apology we gave yesterday, and at the same time look ahead”.
At the centre of the dispute are 151 turbines at Europe’s largest onshore wind farm in the Fosen district, some 450 kilometres north of Oslo.
The activists said a transition to green energy should not come at the expense of the rights of Indigenous people.
