Relatives of the imprisoned call for boycott and vow to block 'this rotten gas'

The relatives of some of the five men jailed this week amid protests over the construction of the Corrib gas pipeline have urged the public to boycott Shell service stations in an attempt to force the company to reroute the installation.

Family members also urged people to put pressure on the Government to withdraw permission for the development.

At a press conference in Dublin, Bríd Ní Sheighin, a daughter of jailed protester Micheál Ó Seighin, read out a statement on behalf of the men, who were jailed on Wednesday for breaching a court order to stop obstructing work on the pipeline.

The men's statement read: "This pipeline is unsafe by Shell's own international standards. It must not pass the houses. There is an easy solution: Clean it (the gas) at sea."

Ms Ní Sheighin said the people of north Mayo were being used as "guinea pigs" for an untested technology.

As well as calling for a public boycott of Shell and Statoil service stations, she said people should picket the constituency clinics of the Minister for Natural Resources, Noel Dempsey, who, she said, had the power to reroute the pipeline.

"What we want is the ordinary people of Ireland to put pressure on the Government. The Government has the power to stop this," she said.

"These men have been jailed for defending their homes, their lives and their families," she added, likening their experience to that of the Ogoni people who clashed with Shell and the Nigerian government over oil exploration in Ogoniland in 1995. "Ten years ago nine innocent men were hung in Nigeria. Yesterday five innocent men were imprisoned - all for fighting big business and protecting their communities."

Her mother, Caitlín, said she had spoken to her husband at Cloverhill prison yesterday "and he is very strong".

"He has been working for five years on this, and he is going to keep up the fight. We are not lying down and taking this rotten gas."

Mary Philbin, a sister of jailed protester Brendan Philbin, said the farmers were not against gas going through the area "but they are against unrefined gas".

In her brother's case, such gas was "going through his front garden", creating not just an environmental hazard but constant noise pollution. Like other campaigners she urged politicians to support their case, particularly "fellow Mayo men" Enda Kenny and Pat Rabbitte.

Sister Majella McCarron, a member of the Shell to Sea group, who worked for 30 years in Nigeria where she befriended executed Ogoni leader Ken Saro Wiwa, said Rossport was one of a number of "fenceline" communities throughout the world who were in conflict with Shell.

Also speaking at the press conference in Dublin, which followed a picket outside the Dáil, was Clare TD James Breen (Ind) who described as "a disgrace and a scandal" the fact that "five law-abiding citizens" had been jailed.

Calling on Mr Dempsey to intervene, he remarked: "We are either a democracy or a dictatorship in this country."