Buenos Aires, Argentina – Residents of the Argentine border city of Gualeguaychu mounted protests Friday against the world court’s refusal to order a halt to the construction of two paper mills in neighboring Uruguay that Buenos Aires says could pollute the Uruguay River.
“Our convictions and our struggle are too strong for 14 officials clad in robes to make us give in,” the Environmental Assembly of Gualeguaychu said in response to the ruling from the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
Argentina filed suit in the ICJ on May 4, claiming that Uruguay unilaterally authorized construction of two pulp mills on the Uruguay River without providing prior notification and holding consultations, as required by a 1975 treaty.
Buenos Aires contended that the paper mills posed a pollution threat to the river, which forms the border between the two countries.
“As for the construction work itself, the Court states that Argentina has not persuaded it that the work presents irreparable damage to the environment or that the mere suspension of the work, pending final judgment, would be capable of reversing or repairing the economic and social consequences attributed by Argentina to it,” the ICJ said.
The court made it clear, however, that the refusal to issue an immediate injunction will have no bearing on its final decision in the case.
Beginning last year, environmentalists in Gualeguaychu, a city of 90,000 that depends largely on tourism, blocked the bridges into Uruguay to protest the mills, at one point for 84 successive days.
Friday, thousands of demonstrators in cars and on bikes stalled traffic for more than three hours on the so-called “Mercosur highway,” considered the main commercial road linking Argentina with its partners in the Southern Cone trade bloc – Uruguay, Paraguay and Brazil.
The slow progression of the vehicles, which stopped at various intervals before reaching the west bank of the Uruguay River, backed up traffic on the bridge to the Uruguayan town of Fray Bentos.
At the end of the protest, members of the Environmental Assembly of Gualeguaychu read a communique stating that they were “stronger and more united than ever” and warned Spain’s Ence and Finland’s Botnia, the firms building the pulp mills, that they “should not feel at ease.”
Argentine President Nestor Kirchner, meanwhile, said Friday in Buenos Aires that he will defend his country’s rights in this dispute, which began almost three years ago, with “dignity, responsibility and strength.”
“I want it made clear that the dispute in The Hague has just now started and we’re making important gains.”
