Woman goes on hunger strike to stop Shell

Maura Harrington has decided to take a stand by going on a hunger strike and putting her life at risk in order to stop Shell's plan to run a gas pipeline through a coastal Irish village.

Harrington's hunger strike began last Tuesday and is another chapter in the ongoing desperate battle between the local residents of Rossport in County Mayo, Ireland and the multinational oil company Shell. For eight years now the community has been fighting against plans to build a pipeline from an offshore gas extraction outfit through or near Rossport and on to an onshore refinery.

Harrington, a former headmistress, has been opposed to the onshore pipeline from the start, and believes Shell should build an offshore refinery. She gave notice to the commander of Shell's Solitaire boat that if it came into the bay she would begin her strike and carry on till the ship went away.

Harrington, who only weighs 42kg (6st 9lb), says she had been contemplating the hunger strike for months now, but the decision was finally made when she heard that the Solitaire was on its way. It sprang out of her despair, she says, over the actions not just of Shell but of the local authorities, the Garda, and the government.

"What kind of country are we living in?" she says. "This part of the world was such a beautiful place, and it is painful, physically and emotionally, to see what has happened here with the construction work. So I have put my life and death into the hands of the Solitaire."