At least 530 people demonstrating at a Nevada nuclear testing site were arrested Sunday for allegedly trespassing on government property.
The arrests came on the next-to-last day of an 11-day event organized in protest of underground nuclear testing on the Western Shoshone Reservation.Sunday's anti-Columbus protest drew some 2,000 protesters from 12 countries, including participants of the European Peace Pilgrimage, who trekked cross-country to the reservation about 65 miles north of Las Vegas.
The protesters came at the invitation of the Western Shoshone National Council, who last year issued a worldwide plea for help in putting a stop to nuclear testing on Indian lands. Shoshone leaders are concerned because the cancer rate among their tribe living at the site is 42 percent higher than the national average.
The arrestees were loaded onto buses and driven to Beatty, Nye's county seat located about 40 miles away, where they were cited and released.
All 530 arrests were for trespassing, said Derek Scammell, a spokesman for the Department of Energy. Earlier, two men were arrested for allegedly spray painting anti-nuclear slogans on two cars at the testing site, which encompasses about 1,000 square miles, comparable to the size of Rhode Island.
One demonstrator was rushed to a nearby hospital after fainting in 95-degree heat. The demonstrator, identified by protesters as Marianika Coppens, 30, of Belgium, had been fasting for five days.
Scammell called her illness "self-induced."
Heidi Carter, a spokeswoman for Healing Global Wounds, said the demonstration was for the most part peaceful and that the arrests were planned.
"They walked on to the test site to take back (Indian) land," Carter said. "Our belief is that the land doesn't belong to the U.S. Government. Our belief is that it belongs to the Shoshones."
In 1893, the Shoshone Tribe signed what became known as the Ruby Valley Treaty giving the U.S. government rights of passage through the territory now in question. Carter and others charge that the government used the treaty to abuse the land. The Shoshones have taken the case to court.