Status: 01/10/2023 11:27 am
The police in Lützerath have started to remove the first barricades. Demonstrators formed human chains and sit-ins, some digging into the ground. The climate activist Neubauer criticized the police strategy.
The police have started removing barricades at the entrance to the village of Lützerath in the Rhenish lignite mining area. This is necessary for the upcoming work of the energy company RWE, the emergency services wrote on Twitter. This is not the start of the evacuation.
On site, the emergency services appealed to the climate activists occupying the village with loudspeaker announcements to “leave their blockades immediately”. Otherwise they would have to be evacuated “by means of coercion”.
Activists: “Climate protection is not a crime!”
Several hundred demonstrators are on site. They formed human chains and set up a sit-in. Some of those involved dug about half a meter deep into the ground.
“It’s about blocking the access to Lützi,” said an activist. She and her comrades-in-arms shouted, among other things, “Get lost!”, “Shame on you!”, “On the barricades!” and “Protecting the climate is not a crime!”. Most activists are masked. According to the dpa news agency, the tone towards the emergency services is sometimes aggressive.
Due to a general decree from the district of Heinsberg, the police are already able to clear the village. However, District Administrator Stephan Pusch wants to inform about the eviction and the associated police operation in the afternoon. The actual evacuation could then begin on Wednesday.
Neubauer: “The opposite of peaceful”
Climate activist Luisa Neubauer described the local police strategy as not particularly peaceful. A peaceful eviction had been announced by politicians, but what was happening on site was “pretty much the opposite of that,” she said on Deutschlandfunk.
“Several hundreds of people just came into the village overnight, the emergency services are being mobilized from all over the country and obviously there is no real political plan at all other than to bring more and more police forces there.”
The aim of the activists is initially to delay the eviction and make it politically very expensive. “That is also very important, because with this decision to give Lützerath to RWE, the federal government is opposed to the Paris climate protection agreement,” said Neubauer. The coal under Lützerath is no longer needed for the energy supply in Germany.
She therefore expects the federal government “to pause at this moment and check on what basis they are making these huge, far-reaching decisions”.
The Greens-led economics ministries in the federal government and in North Rhine-Westphalia have agreed with the energy supplier RWE to phase out coal in the Rhineland by 2030. Five neighboring villages threatened with demolition are to be retained, but Lützerath is to give way. According to RWE, the coal under the village is used for the energy supply.