Tomaš Kappa
HALO ENERGY - Lusatia briefing - Foreign Press Association, London May 2002
(Source: www.halo-energy.com ) The German Interior Ministry pressured Sorbian representatives and media to wipe out any memory and public record of this Lusatian Sorb political
statement for self-determination. Lusatia briefing at Foreign Press Association, London May 2002 (Jan Nuk, Domowina Chairman, left / Tomaš
Kappa, Ralph Th. Kappler centre)
Treasure hunt in Sorbian Lusatia
This is a report on Germany’s secret scandal, its treatment of the Sorbian people. They are allowed to perform their folk-dances for German crowds.
Yet, despite their minority rights and despite Lusatia’s abundant mineral riches, the German authorities continue to close down Sorbian schools and kindergartens. As Germany’s State television station MDR revealed recently, irreplaceable landscapes and many Sorb villages have been and continue to be destroyed on the basis of a Nazi law. The Sorbs are the smallest Slavonic nation and a national minority within Germany living in a region called Lusatia. They cultivated Lusatia and have been living there for over 1600 years, always under German pressure to give up their own Slavonic culture.
This Nazi law which was never eliminated, has made it possible to confiscate privately owned houses and commercial properties in Lusatia on a huge scale up to the present day. The original purpose of the law was to feed Hitler’s war machine with the brown-coal of Lusatia. The present German government has allowed the Swedish State energy trust, Vattenfall, to use it to destroy an area in Lusatia the size of Luxemburg.
Sorbs, also known as Wends in their American and Australian exile enclaves, feel uneasy about this assault. In the past, German oppression was always linked to campaigns against their mother tongue. The Sorbian language and culture have managed to survive for more than 16 centuries. Lusatia, or Luzica, as this water-rich country is affectionately called by its First Nation, is one of the most ancient cultivated regions of Europe. Lusatia is blessed with the largest gold, copper and rare earth resources in Germany.
A quarter of our entire nation has been forced to leave our homelands by the mining lobby. We Sorbs are being forced over the cliff, warned Jan Nuk, chairman of the Sorbian umbrella organisation, Domowina, through the Foreign Press Association in London. Shortly afterwards, the gates of Buckingham Palace opened for Sorbian representatives. Sorbs brought the first foreign gift to London during the Golden Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. Sorbs have not campaigned in the British capital since the end of WW II. In 1946 they tried, in vain, to lobby in London for Lusatia to join with Czechoslovakia. Up to this day Lusatia is located in the federal states of Brandenburg and Saxony. Despite its natural riches it is continually denigrated as a supposedly undeveloped region by the coal-mining lobby. However the region suffers mainly from a lack of courageous policies. Even twenty years after the collapse of the communist regime, Sorbs have no legitimate democratic representation of their own.
136 obliterated villages
Werner Domain and his wife were the last inhabitants of the Sorbian village of Horno. The seventy year old, retired couple tried to withstand the ongoing intimidation of mining operators. They managed to plant a linden tree in front of their house while giant coal excavators approached amidst deafening noise and clouds of dust. By then, Horno was already deserted and destroyed as if by war. 136 villages disappeared in Lusatian lignite coal craters, right in the heart of Germany. Germany, the self-proclaimed green technology and eco-champion! These brutal actions accelerated the dissolution of the Sorbian people. On the Internet site www.verschwundene-orte.de one can find the melodious names of destroyed Sorbian villages such as Publik, Bukovina, Horno, Barak, Rovno or Lacoma. Horno was destroyed by the Swedish state-owned energy company Vattenfall, although there was no exploitable coal under this village. Vattenfall took over almost the entire East German energy infrastructure during the fall of communism. This was no coincidence, since some of the most prominent East German politicians made a swift career under these lobbying wings. Sweden was also one of the main western trade partners and technology suppliers to the East German communist regime. Today, Vattenfall sponsors Sorbian communications and education infrastructures, which undermines Sorbian self-representation. The Lusatian mining company Laubag announced euphemistically, that they had “appropriated” more than 750 square kilometres of land. What they actually did through this massive land excavation was to destroy an area the size of the City State Hamburg. Prof. Joachim Katzur, head of the Institute for Mining Redevelopment, goes even further in a ZEIT interview: "Actually, the Lusatian mining operators have affected four times as much land, if we also count the land where the flow of below ground water is disturbed.
Thus over 3000 square kilometres of fertile urban Lusatian land were sacrificed to relentless coal mining. 3000 square kilometres of affected land is more than the size of Luxembourg. The size of Lusatia as a whole is comparable to the size of the EU country Belgium. In Germany thousands of square kilometres of fertile land has disappeared in open cast lignite mining craters. This man-made intervention into nature is the biggest transformation of the earth's surface since the last ice age.
HALO ENERGY - Lusatia briefing - Foreign Press Association, London May 2002
(Source: www.halo-energy.com ) The German Interior Ministry pressured Sorbian representatives and media to wipe out any memory and public record of this Lusatian Sorb political
statement for self-determination. Lusatia briefing at Foreign Press Association, London May 2002 (Jan Nuk, Domowina Chairman, left / Tomaš
Kappa, Ralph Th. Kappler centre)
Treasure hunt in Sorbian Lusatia
This is a report on Germany’s secret scandal, its treatment of the Sorbian people. They are allowed to perform their folk-dances for German crowds.
Yet, despite their minority rights and despite Lusatia’s abundant mineral riches, the German authorities continue to close down Sorbian schools and kindergartens. As Germany’s State television station MDR revealed recently, irreplaceable landscapes and many Sorb villages have been and continue to be destroyed on the basis of a Nazi law. The Sorbs are the smallest Slavonic nation and a national minority within Germany living in a region called Lusatia. They cultivated Lusatia and have been living there for over 1600 years, always under German pressure to give up their own Slavonic culture.
This Nazi law which was never eliminated, has made it possible to confiscate privately owned houses and commercial properties in Lusatia on a huge scale up to the present day. The original purpose of the law was to feed Hitler’s war machine with the brown-coal of Lusatia. The present German government has allowed the Swedish State energy trust, Vattenfall, to use it to destroy an area in Lusatia the size of Luxemburg.
Sorbs, also known as Wends in their American and Australian exile enclaves, feel uneasy about this assault. In the past, German oppression was always linked to campaigns against their mother tongue. The Sorbian language and culture have managed to survive for more than 16 centuries. Lusatia, or Luzica, as this water-rich country is affectionately called by its First Nation, is one of the most ancient cultivated regions of Europe. Lusatia is blessed with the largest gold, copper and rare earth resources in Germany.
A quarter of our entire nation has been forced to leave our homelands by the mining lobby. We Sorbs are being forced over the cliff, warned Jan Nuk, chairman of the Sorbian umbrella organisation, Domowina, through the Foreign Press Association in London. Shortly afterwards, the gates of Buckingham Palace opened for Sorbian representatives. Sorbs brought the first foreign gift to London during the Golden Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. Sorbs have not campaigned in the British capital since the end of WW II. In 1946 they tried, in vain, to lobby in London for Lusatia to join with Czechoslovakia. Up to this day Lusatia is located in the federal states of Brandenburg and Saxony. Despite its natural riches it is continually denigrated as a supposedly undeveloped region by the coal-mining lobby. However the region suffers mainly from a lack of courageous policies. Even twenty years after the collapse of the communist regime, Sorbs have no legitimate democratic representation of their own.
136 obliterated villages
Werner Domain and his wife were the last inhabitants of the Sorbian village of Horno. The seventy year old, retired couple tried to withstand the ongoing intimidation of mining operators. They managed to plant a linden tree in front of their house while giant coal excavators approached amidst deafening noise and clouds of dust. By then, Horno was already deserted and destroyed as if by war. 136 villages disappeared in Lusatian lignite coal craters, right in the heart of Germany. Germany, the self-proclaimed green technology and eco-champion! These brutal actions accelerated the dissolution of the Sorbian people. On the Internet site www.verschwundene-orte.de one can find the melodious names of destroyed Sorbian villages such as Publik, Bukovina, Horno, Barak, Rovno or Lacoma. Horno was destroyed by the Swedish state-owned energy company Vattenfall, although there was no exploitable coal under this village. Vattenfall took over almost the entire East German energy infrastructure during the fall of communism. This was no coincidence, since some of the most prominent East German politicians made a swift career under these lobbying wings. Sweden was also one of the main western trade partners and technology suppliers to the East German communist regime. Today, Vattenfall sponsors Sorbian communications and education infrastructures, which undermines Sorbian self-representation. The Lusatian mining company Laubag announced euphemistically, that they had “appropriated” more than 750 square kilometres of land. What they actually did through this massive land excavation was to destroy an area the size of the City State Hamburg. Prof. Joachim Katzur, head of the Institute for Mining Redevelopment, goes even further in a ZEIT interview: "Actually, the Lusatian mining operators have affected four times as much land, if we also count the land where the flow of below ground water is disturbed.
Thus over 3000 square kilometres of fertile urban Lusatian land were sacrificed to relentless coal mining. 3000 square kilometres of affected land is more than the size of Luxembourg. The size of Lusatia as a whole is comparable to the size of the EU country Belgium. In Germany thousands of square kilometres of fertile land has disappeared in open cast lignite mining craters. This man-made intervention into nature is the biggest transformation of the earth's surface since the last ice age.