Aachen police, which is in charge of the evacuation operation in the village, said today that around 300 people had been evacuated, while four incidents of resistance were recorded.
The evacuation operation of Lucerat, the abandoned village in North Rhine-Westphalia, which had been occupied by activists trying to prevent the demolition of the buildings and the expansion of the coal mine in the area, was completed earlier.
According to police, two activists remain hiding in underground tunnels, while Swedish activist Greta Thunberg was among the protesters removed by police today.
A spokesman for the RWE company, which controls the coal mine, said it was unknown how long it would take for the two activists to get out of the tunnels, but assured that the fire brigade was constantly checking the ventilation devices at the site.
Aachen police, which is in charge of the evacuation operation in the village, said today that around 300 people had been evacuated, while four incidents of resistance were recorded.
More than 154 arrests have been made since the start of the operation and, according to the police, in the incidents that broke out on the sidelines of the demonstration yesterday, 70 police officers and nine activists were injured and more than 30 official vehicles were damaged.
As the magazine Der Spiegel reports, about 1,000 hooded men tried to break through the barricades, with the police using water cannons and pepper spray. Activist organizations accused the police of “excessive use of force”.
Greta Thunberg was also in Lucerat yesterday, who likened the landscape around the village to Tolkien’s wild kingdom, “Mordor”, where “absolute evil” was found. The 20-year-old activist appeared again earlier today, taking part in an activist group action, and eventually sat on a wall at the edge of the mine. Police said that “for her own safety”, she was asked to leave the scene, and when she did not comply, two officers took her away by handcuffing her.
In 2017, the approximately 900 inhabitants of Lucerat were forced to leave their homes and relocate, in order to proceed with the exploitation of the lignite-rich area.
Already in 2013, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that the expansion of the Gartzweiler mine was clearly in the public interest. About 700 activists later settled in the abandoned buildings, making the village a symbol of the climate crisis and the fight for de-lignitization in energy production.
A district court has since issued eviction orders, which took effect last Tuesday, but failed to persuade the activists to leave.
On the contrary, the number of protesters has been steadily increasing in the past few days, ahead of yesterday’s planned demonstration against the government’s plan, which cites the increased need for lignite due to the abandonment of Russian oil and natural gas.
In October 2022 the “green” economy minister Robert Habeck and the also “green” economy minister of North Rhine-Westphalia Mona Neubauer reached a compromise with the energy company RWE, to accelerate the de-lignification of the region from 2038 to 2030, with the energy giant to accept the expansion of its activities to be limited to Lucerat and to save five already abandoned villages that were about to be razed. According to the government and RWE plan, the mining expansion will yield an additional 280 tons of lignite.
However, the activists of Lützerat, under the slogan “Lützi bleibt” (Lützi remains), had occupied the remaining buildings, while they had also created makeshift camps.
RES-EMP
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