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Daring Takeover of London Ferris by
Anti-Dam Activists

By Mila Parot Zubimendi.

Two Basque activists climbed to the top of the world's biggest ferris, London's Millennium Wheel, on Monday to protest construction of the Itoiz reservoir in the Irati valley in Spain's Basque province of Navarre. The two demonstrators, members of the environmental group Solidarios con Itoiz, spent the night 450 feet above the River Thames. They slept suspended in a hammock.

	Solidarios con Itoiz banner hanging from London's Millennium Wheel

On Tuesday, police escorted the two men in tandem as they used ropes to climb from the top of the wheel to the central rim. A construction lift brought them down the final stretch, into the arms of Scotland Yard officers. They were arrested on suspicion of causing criminal damage. The two men were among nine demonstrators from Solidarios with Itoiz and an Indian group called Narmada U.K. protesting dam projects all over the world.

During the 30-hour demonstration, the pair unfurled banners reading "Stop The Dams." Their fellow demonstrators cheered and clapped widly as the pair waved from the wheel. They descended voluntarily on mountaineering ropes to triumphal cheers from onlookers.

The $33 million metallic wheel, the fourth-tallest structure in London, will open its 32 passenger-carrying glass capsules to the public on the millennium eve. But many have denounced the wheel, which dwarfs Big Ben on the other side of the River Thames, as an eyesore that should be taken down one millennium celebrations are over.

The dam demonstrators were all released without charges on Wednesday.

October 1999

Mila Parot Zubimendi is a law student and environment activist. She lives in Miarritze.