After just three days, the evacuation of Lützerath is almost complete. While the first buildings of the protest village were demolished, prominent visitors emerged. A large rally is planned for Saturday.
The Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg visited Lützerath and sharply criticized the actions of the police in clearing the village.
“It’s outrageous how police violence is,” said Thunberg. The Aachen police chief Dirk Weinspach rejected the accusation. “It is incomprehensible to me how she comes to her amazing assessment,” he told the “Spiegel”. “She used most of her stay to speak to the press and to make statements. While almost next to her, very careful work was being done to get activists off the site,” Weinspach told dpa in the evening.
In the town on the edge of the Rhenish lignite mining area, which belongs to Erkelenz, the end of the clearing that began on Wednesday was already in sight on Friday. The police announced on Friday evening that there were no longer any activists in the houses or on the roofs of the buildings. A tunnel with two activists and several tree houses still have to be cleared. When the village is demolished, the energy company RWE wants to excavate the coal underneath.
Special forces were also in the process of advancing to two activists in a tunnel under the site on Friday evening. An activist from “Lützerath is alive” told a dpa reporter: “They’re fine.” She and another activist acted as mediators in the event of clashes between the police and squatters, but have now been expelled from the site by the police, she criticized. A police spokesman said the two mediators were activists – and the site would eventually be cleared. The two therefore had no special status that allowed them to stay. He emphasized that the activists in the tunnel could communicate with the emergency services at any time.
While activists were carried out of the last building they occupied on Friday, the demolition of farmer Eckardt Heukamp’s former farm had already begun. On one wall of the courtyard, a yellow banner with the inscription “1.5°C means: Lützerath stays!” was visible from afar. hung – this wall has now been demolished. The Heukamp-Hof had been seen in the background of many protest actions for years and had a correspondingly high symbolic value.
Thunberg: “Horrible to see what’s happening here”
Thunberg toured the village and crater of the brown coal mine on Friday, holding up a sign that read “Keep it in the ground.” “It’s horrifying to see what’s happening here,” said Thunberg. According to the police, the climate activist from Sweden visited the town of Lützerath accompanied by a member of the Bundestag from the Greens. Kathrin Henneberger’s Bundestag office confirmed in the evening that Thunberg had accompanied the MP, who is therefore on site as a parliamentary observer.
Thunberg announced that on Saturday she would take part in the planned rally for the preservation of Lützerath. When governments and corporations work together in this way to destroy the environment and endanger countless people, the population must speak out against it. “We want to show what people power looks like, what democracy looks like.” The police expect about 8,000 participants at the rally.
Two activists stuck further in tunnel
Of the several hundred climate activists who had occupied Lützerath, only a few dozen were left on Friday. The others had left voluntarily or been taken away by the police. Some still held out in tree houses. Two activists in a tunnel gave the police the biggest headache. Aachen police chief Dirk Weinspach climbed a little way down the shaft and then said that the rescue of the two people would have to be carried out by special forces from the fire brigade and the Federal Agency for Technical Relief (THW). “I just think it’s bad what dangers these people take on themselves,” criticized Weinspach. The construction is anything but safe.
In the camp of the activists, the police made progress with the clearance: construction machines overturned trees without bark on a meadow, which the activists had connected with ropes at a height of a good ten meters. Police officers also cleared the occupiers’ self-built dwellings, but by no means managed to complete all of them by the evening. The evacuation was initially stopped in the evening. Pallet trucks used by the police were parked at the edge of the site.
A tree house, to which police officers had previously gained access, was even recaptured by activists: “We’re back!” shouted an activist in a white coat from the window of the tree house at a height of a good ten meters.
Chancellor Scholz: “Border where protest becomes violent”
Chancellor Olaf Scholz criticized parts of the protests. “I also used to demonstrate more often. However, for me there is a limit that runs exactly where protest becomes violent,” said the SPD politician of the “wochentaz”. Scholz did not accept criticism that the development of the lignite deposits under Lützerath would jeopardize the climate goals: “This accusation is not true. It’s exactly the opposite: we make politics so that we can achieve our climate goals.”
Climate Protection Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) also showed little understanding for the protests against the demolition of Lützerath. “There are many good reasons to demonstrate for more climate protection, for example against the Greens. But Lützerath is simply the wrong symbol,” Habeck told the “Spiegel”.
The village is not the symbol for a continuation of the Garzweiler lignite mine in the Rhineland, but “it’s the end of the line,” said Habeck. The coal phase-out in the local coal mining area is preferred by eight years to 2030, which was always the goal of the climate movement. “We save five villages and farms with around 450 residents. The Hambacher Forest has been secured. The approved mining volume for coal in opencast mines was halved as a result of the agreement.”
2000 Greens write an open letter against the eviction
But meanwhile there are rumblings at the party base of the Greens: By Friday morning, more than 2,000 Greens members had signed an open letter against the eviction. Habeck and NRW Economics Minister Mona Neubaur are asked in the letter to stop the action immediately. The “negotiated deal with the energy company RWE threatens to break with the principles of our party,” it says. The co-federal spokesman for the Green Youth, Timon Dzienus, warned of the Greens becoming alienated from the climate movement. “Right now the Greens need the support of the climate movement,” he told the news portal “t-online”. “The RWE deal doesn’t help at all.”
According to a survey by the ZDF “Politbarometer”, a majority of Germans are against the expansion of the lignite mining areas, as is currently planned after the evacuation of Lützerath. 59 percent of respondents spoke out against such an expansion – 33 percent are in favor. Above all, a clear majority (87 percent) of Green voters are against the project. On the other hand, 60 percent of all respondents believe that greater use of coal-fired power plants to secure the power supply is correct. 36 percent are against it.
Source: Stern
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