The eviction by the police is expected to continue this Thursday.
(Photo: dpa)
erkelenz In the lignite mining town of Lützerath, it was largely quiet on the first night after the evacuation began. There were no special incidents, said a police spokesman on Thursday morning. “During the day, the clearance work will continue,” he emphasized.
A dpa reporter on site also reported a largely quiet night. Once on Wednesday evening some firecrackers were thrown and fireworks rockets were ignited from an occupied building, nobody was injured. Meanwhile, not far away, the police took a group of climate activists off a warehouse roof.
However, the emergency services continued into the night against activists who want to prevent the coal from being excavated under the site. Police officers took a good ten activists with lifting platforms from a height of about ten meters from the roof of a former agricultural hall, as a dpa reporter observed.
Elsewhere, police spent several hours overnight rescuing an activist from a wrecked car that had been set up to obstruct a path. The woman had entrenched herself in the wreck and cemented her feet in the path. She was retrieved early in the morning.
Top jobs of the day
Find the best jobs now and
be notified by email.
Some climate activists are still holding out in the tree houses and in occupied buildings. How many there are is unclear. There was constant rain on site and there was strong wind.
The real challenge still lies ahead of the police
Fridays for Future activist Luisa Neubauer called the police’s actions “absolutely incomprehensible”. “Evictions at night in the dark. It’s dangerous, provocative, escalating. What is it, what are you so afraid of?” she asked on Twitter.
The alliance “Lützerath cannot be cleared” has announced protest actions such as sit-ins in the area for Thursday. Fridays for Future wants to demonstrate nationwide on the second day of the eviction. This is how Neubauer wants to talk at 10 a.m. in the Erkelenz district of Keyenberg, around four kilometers from Lützerath.
The eviction by the police is expected to continue this Thursday. Aachen’s police chief Dirk Weinspach said on Wednesday that the real challenge still lies ahead of the police – he was referring to the clearing of the seven buildings on the site.
The police are of course still on site, said a spokeswoman. But there are no plans to clear the houses at night. Activists are still staying in these houses and in self-built tree houses.
>> Read here: SPDMP calls for eviction moratorium for Lützerath
At the start of the evacuation, scuffles broke out early on Wednesday morning. According to the police, a Molotov cocktail, stones and pyrotechnics were thrown in the direction of the officers. A spokeswoman for the “Lützerath is living” initiative accused the police of being too tough.
Habeck: Unfortunately, Lützerath could not be saved
In the face of criticism from the climate movement of the Greens because of the eviction of Lützerath, Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck was concerned. “That also touches me or drives me, like everyone in my party,” said Habeck on Wednesday evening in ZDF’s “heute-journal”.
“But still we have to explain what is right. And what was right – unfortunately – was to ward off the gas shortage, to ward off an energy emergency in Germany, also with additional electricity generation from lignite – and to bring forward the phase-out of coal.”
Clearing of Lützerath has begun
Lützerath is not “just the way to go of energy policy in the past: electricity generation from lignite,” stressed Habeck. “It’s not, as is claimed, the eternal continuation, it’s the bottom line.”
>> Read here: Barricades and sirens – this is how the police cleared the Lützerath protest camp
Unfortunately, the village of Lützerath could no longer be saved – “but it is the end of lignite-fired power generation in NRW”. “In this respect – with great respect for the climate movement – in my opinion the place is the wrong symbol.”
The settlement of Lützerath is to be demolished in order to be able to mine the coal deposits below. Climate activists want to prevent this. The economics ministries led by the Greens in the federal and state governments of North Rhine-Westphalia had agreed a compromise with the energy company RWE, which included the digging up of the coal under Lützerath – but also a coal phase-out in NRW brought forward to 2030.
More: “The right argument in the wrong place” – Lützerath puts the Greens in need of explanation