New protest planned against rail tunnel through Italian Alps

0 Comments | AFP, March, 2008

CHIOMONTE, Italy (AFP) — A multi-billion-euro project to bore a tunnel through the Italian Alps to create a high-speed rail link between Turin, Italy, and Lyon, France, will face a new protest on Sunday.

In Chiomonte, in northwestern Italy's Susa Valley, diehard opponents of the project will line up to buy a symbolic square metre of land each along the route of the planned rail line.

More than 1,250 activists including ecologists, artists and intellectuals are involved in the initiative to oppose the tunnel, which has an estimated pricetag of 7.6 billion euros (12 billion dollars).

Several thousand others have gathered in the town to signal to the authorities that no one can change the mind of the protest movement that has dubbed itself the "Indians of the...