Dhe federal government has criticized the violence used by demonstrators to clear the village of Lützerath for lignite mining. The deputy government spokeswoman Christiane Hoffmann referred to an interview by Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) from the weekend in the “taz”, in which he explained that the limit for demonstrations is where there is violence. “This limit was exceeded in Lützerath, and we expressly condemn that,” said Hoffmann on Monday in Berlin.
Activists had accused the police of excess violence during the major demonstration on Saturday. A “high two-digit to three-digit number” of participants was injured, said a spokeswoman for the demonstrators’ paramedic service on Sunday. Among them were many seriously injured and some critically injured. According to the police, nine activists were taken to the hospital by ambulance. According to this, more than 70 police officers have suffered injuries on the site since the start of the evacuation operation. A police spokesman said on Sunday that the injuries were only partly due to violence by demonstrators.
“The police enforced the law in Lützerath,” said Hoffmann. This must be accepted, and it was also accepted by the majority of the peacefully demonstrating participants in the assembly. “But unfortunately not by everyone.” This led to the clashes that the police actually wanted to avoid. The operation must now be processed, including the proportionality of the police action. NRW Interior Minister Herbert Reul (CDU) had already announced this.
Hoffmann thanked the police officers who were on duty around Lützerath. It was not an easy mission, preparations and implementation were enormously challenging.
Addressing the activists, Hoffmann explained: “This federal government has understood that we have to do everything we can to make the energy transition a success.” However, the path to climate neutrality in 2045 must also be feasible. Until then, Germany does not want to emit more greenhouse gases than can be bound again. “We cannot leave fossil fuels behind overnight,” said Hoffmann.
Eight activists on a bucket wheel excavator
The protests surrounding the evacuation of the village continued on Monday: climate activists occupied a bucket-wheel excavator in the Hambach opencast lignite mine in the Rhenish lignite mining area. A total of four people have been on the excavator since the early hours of the morning, said an RWE spokesman. This has ceased operations. The police have been informed.
According to the protest group “Counterattack – for the good life”, eight activists occupied the excavator. With the action you want to show solidarity with the people in the village of Lützerath. The group also criticized the actions of the police there and called for the socialization of energy production.
There was another action on Monday morning around four kilometers as the crow flies from Lützerath. Climate activists abseiled by the hour from a motorway bridge (A44) near Lützerath, blocking traffic on the road below for a few hours. There are a total of five people, two of them in wheelchairs, said a police spokesman.
In the almost cleared protest village at the Rhenish opencast lignite mine, it remained quiet on Monday night. As before, two activists are in a tunnel, as a spokesman for RWE said. You are in contact with them. As the “Spiegel” reports, the group is said to have “commissioned an external company from Switzerland to conduct the negotiations”. The team had already arrived in Lützerath at the weekend, and an initial conversation with the activists in the tunnel had been »promising«. There is a possibility that the occupation of the tunnel could soon be ended. RWE does not comment on this when asked.
Party leader Ricarda Lang defends the position of the Greens
Lützerath, around 20 kilometers from the Hambach opencast mine, has been cordoned off by the police for days and is surrounded by a double fence. The buildings of the small settlement in the town of Erkelenz west of Cologne are currently being demolished to enable the energy company RWE to excavate the coal underneath. Climate activists had occupied the abandoned village.
Meanwhile, Greens leader Ricarda Lang has defended her party’s stance on clearing the village of Lützerath for lignite mining. If the Greens “had done nothing”, it would have meant that “Lützerath and five other villages, where 500 other people still live, will be excavated,” said Lang on Monday in the ARD morning magazine, referring to the Greens’ responsibility political compromise that made it possible to evacuate Lützerath.
Previously, some of the climate activists who had occupied Lützerath had voiced considerable criticism of the Greens. Among other things, activists had occupied the headquarters of the North Rhine-Westphalian state association of the party in Düsseldorf.
There was also criticism of the police, who were accused of using disproportionate force, especially on social media. The North Rhine-Westphalian Interior Minister Herbert Reul (CDU) expressly protected the officials on the ARD talk show “Anne Will”. The police worked “highly professionally”, said Reul on Sunday evening.
He will have any case of inappropriate police violence investigated. “We’ve seen a movie or two on the web where we’re like, ‘This doesn’t look good.’ We’ll take a close look at that, we’ve also filed a criminal complaint just to be on the safe side, because I think it needs to be checked. That’s what I’ve always done in recent years, and that’s how it’s done now.”
But it’s not as if there were masses of “crazed police officers” at the demo. He would have wished the organizers of the demo to clearly distance themselves from violence, but that didn’t happen.
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