STORY: Calm and storm reigned in Lützerath on Sunday. The day after the large-scale demonstration for the preservation of the lignite village, the police continued to clear the hamlet in North Rhine-Westphalia. The last activists who protested the demolition in tree houses were brought back to earth with hydraulic platforms. Only two climate protectors, who have holed up in an underground tunnel, persevered there. According to the police, the large-scale operation in Lützerath, which has been running since Wednesday, remained mostly peaceful – until Saturday. There had been riots on the fringes of the mass rally. The police sometimes used batons and water cannons against demonstrators. Allegations that the officials had reacted too harshly were rejected by police spokesman Andreas Müller on Sunday. “Anyone who breaks through police lines on the one hand in the direction of the opencast mine and on the other hand in the direction of the town of Lützerath, who breaks through the police lines and does not stop after being asked to do so several times and continues to walk towards the police forces, one must first assume that they are really consciously and deliberately looking for a confrontation with the police “That’s no justification for every operational situation that we saw yesterday. But that’s at least a clear distancing from the blanket accusation of disproportionate or excessive police violence.” According to Müller, some demonstrators actually managed to break into the mine. “You also have to say that the police forces have actually put themselves in considerable danger here, just to have an effect on people to avert danger, because the opencast mine just happens to pose considerable danger to life and limb at this opencast mine edge. And the other thing : Of course we prevented yesterday, and we were also successful, that no one entered the village of Lützerath to then occupy it again. That was of course also the priority of the police operation.” The energy giant RWE wants to demolish Lützerath in order to be able to excavate the lignite beneath the village. On the other hand, according to the police, 15,000 people had gathered on Saturday. The organizers spoke of up to 35,000 participants. According to the police, 70 emergency services were injured during the demonstration. The authorities initially gave no information about the number of injured demonstrators.