Germany: Police surround anti-coal activists entrenched in a village
German police on Wednesday stepped up their operation to root out anti-coal activists occupying a former village that has become iconic for climate advocates and opponents of fossil fuels.
Law enforcement expects long resistance from activists who want to prevent the expansion of an open-pit lignite mine on the land of this western German hamlet now known throughout the country and even across borders.
A demonstration of support is planned for Saturday, in which several German personalities and Swedish activist Greta Thunberg are to participate.
At dawn on Wednesday, hundreds of police officers launched a new phase of their intervention, completely surrounding the camp and entering the site where some 200 irreducible people took refuge in huts and other facilities built in the trees.
“They forced the first aid team out of the camp,” Mara Sauer, a spokeswoman for the activists, told AFP. “Only some were able to stay in hiding,” she adds.
For others, it’s about staying high as long as possible. Clinging to cables, damp from the rain, the occupants move from tree to tree, above the police forces.
– Several weeks –
The atmosphere was calm according to AFP journalists on the spot, even if the police called on the demonstrators via twitter to refrain from “throwing Molotov cocktails” and to adopt “non-violent” behavior.
She also urged parents present in the camp with their young children to leave immediately because of “the dangers associated with the intervention”.
Erle, a student in her twenties, claims not to have witnessed any violence on either side.
“Everything happened calmly. We were singing, then one of my comrades was taken away, and I was taken with him,” she says.
The security forces have promised not to arrest the demonstrators, but to evacuate them from the camp and then prevent them from returning by blocking access.
The work promises to be long-term: the evacuation operation “could last several weeks”, told AFP the press service of the police, which brought in units from all over Germany.
In the early afternoon, a violin player breaks the silence by giving a concert to the police from the roof of an abandoned house.
All you have to do is look up to see the hooded faces of militants, seated on branches, roofs, on masts, wrapped in survival blankets, sometimes even dressed in anti-atomic suits.
– “Very emotional” debate –
On the ground, activists chained one arm to a concrete barrel.
“We can’t untie them, not today anyway. For that we need special scissors. They remained in the crane outside the camp”, observes a young policeman from Aachen.
The specialized teams “have other things to do at the moment, one thing at a time”, he adds.
Government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit acknowledged in Berlin that the fate of Lützerath has caused a “very emotional debate” in the country but stressed that its destruction was “legal” and that this should be respected.
The German energy group RWE, owner of the place, wants to demolish the village to expand its huge lignite mine.
This coal “is necessary to operate power plants at high capacity in times of energy crisis and thus save gas in electricity production in Germany,” the group said in a statement on Wednesday.
He also recalled having obtained for this “all the necessary authorizations” and having undertaken in exchange to close its coal-fired power stations in the Rhine basin eight years earlier than planned, in 2030.
Germany had to increase its use of coal this winter because of the halt in deliveries of Russian gas, on which it was highly dependent, decided by Moscow since the invasion of Ukraine.