Munich’s motorists and police officers can’t expect a peaceful Christmas season: The activist group of the “Last Generation” has announced that it will continue its protests, which take the form of traffic blockades, over the holidays. A spokeswoman confirmed on Wednesday that a Christmas break was out of the question because the time for climate protection measures was too short: “We will continue and intensify the blockades.”
She was reacting to a meeting the evening before, at which the Evangelical Bishop Heinrich Bedford-Strohm brought together representatives of the “last generation” and the Bavarian Minister of the Interior, Joachim Herrmann (CSU). According to a church spokesman, Bedford-Strohm suggested a kind of Christmas peace during the conversation.
The supporters of the “Last Generation” had already taken a break for reflection last week and only resumed their demonstrations in Munich on Monday. After the recent protests, four climate activists must now remain in police custody. They belonged to a group that blocked traffic at the junction of the Lindau A96 motorway on the Mittlerer Ring on Tuesday morning. The police had applied in court for the men to be held in custody for five days, i.e. until Sunday.
According to the Minister of the Interior, the activists travel to the blockades from all over Germany
In two cases, the responsible judge went beyond this and ordered the maximum possible preventive detention of 30 days: The 63-year-old Winfried L. and the 48-year-old Wolfgang M. now have to prepare for a stay in the JVA Stadelheim to Dreikönig, more precisely : until January 5th. With them, the judge found a “persistent repetition” of the traffic blockades classified by the police as criminal offenses. Wolfgang M. was already in Stadelheim for 23 days in November, where he also went on a hunger strike.
The police had also requested custody for six other people they had arrested on Tuesday evening during a blockade at the Stachus. This operation lasted from 7:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. because the officials had trouble detaching one of the activists from the asphalt. According to the police, instead of the usual superglue, he had used a new adhesive that the police were not prepared for.
However, the request to keep these activists in custody was denied by the judges, and all were released. The responsible district court did not give an explanation for the different assessment of the applications. When asked by SZ, a spokesman only said that a total of four judges were involved with the applications and each made their own decisions; In principle, no information was given on the content of the individual hearings and non-public proceedings.
In the Interior Committee of the Bavarian state parliament, Interior Minister Herrmann said on Wednesday that climate activists from various alliances – but above all from “Scientist Rebellion” and “Last Generation” – have carried out a total of 18 blockades in Munich since October 25. 68 people were involved. 40 were taken into police custody, 30 of them for a week or more. It is noticeable “that those involved in the actions taking place here often do not live in Bavaria themselves, but travel from all over Germany or from abroad to commit crimes here”. Only about a third actually came from Bavaria.