Climate activists have continued their protests against the mining of lignite and the demolition of Lützerath in several places in North Rhine-Westphalia. Again there were clashes with the police. Among other things, an excavator as well as rails and access roads were blocked. RWE announced criminal charges.
Several hundred demonstrators gathered near the village of Lützerath, which has since been cleared and is earmarked for demolition. Among them was the Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg. According to the police, people broke away from the demonstration and headed towards the Garzweiler opencast mine. Entering the steep edge of the opencast mine and Lützerath is prohibited.
Thunberg was carried away from the demolition edge as one of several demonstrators by police officers. A dpa photographer observed this. Thunberg was therefore carried away by three police officers and dropped off after a good 50 meters to carry out an identity check. Police confirmed Tuesday that Thunberg was part of the group that had moved towards the ledge and were then stopped and carried away.
A police spokeswoman said Thunberg was taken into custody for the determination of personal details. Once the identities of everyone involved were established, the group would be driven out of the danger area in buses and then released.
Police use batons and pepper spray
There had previously been confrontations between the police and activists as they headed towards the edge. Police used batons, pepper spray and officers on horses. Lützerath itself had been evacuated by the police in the past few days and is sealed off. The demonstrators demanded on self-painted banners: “Lützi stays!”.
After the demonstration, according to RWE, an activist entered the opencast lignite mine. “Of course it’s grossly careless what he’s doing there,” said an RWE spokesman. The man was rescued on Tuesday evening by the police’s height intervention team from an embankment on which he was standing on a “kind of landing”. Police officers would have lowered themselves from above and pulled him up.
Numerous decentralized actions
A bucket-wheel excavator was manned in the Inden open-cast lignite mine and had to temporarily stop working. The Aachen police spoke of 20 to 30 activists involved, a spokesman for the energy company RWE of 30 to 40. In the end, everyone climbed voluntarily from the excavator, said a police spokesman.
According to police and RWE information, a group of around 120 activists also occupied the coal railway tracks to the Neurath power plant near Rommerskirchen. Those who refused to leave the tracks were carried away, the police spokesman said. “There is no coal train here today. We are standing in the way of destruction with our bodies,” tweeted the “Ende Gelände” alliance. An RWE spokesman said on Tuesday evening that the campaign was over and the coal trains were in the lead again.
Activists from the group Extinction Rebellion clung to the NRW Ministry of the Interior in Düsseldorf, later they left voluntarily or were removed by the police. Around 150 demonstrators also gathered in the state parliament, who then marched in front of the NRW Ministry of Economic Affairs.
Activists also temporarily occupied two access roads to the Garzweiler opencast mine. In Cologne, climate activists stuck to a street and thus brought the commuter traffic to a standstill.
The police forces had prepared for spontaneous, decentralized actions in many places. The action alliance “Lützerath Unräumbar”, which also includes groups from Fridays For Future and Last Generation, had called for a joint day of action.
