(Lützerath) Police said on Sunday they had almost finished evacuating climate activists from a German village ordered to be destroyed to make way for a coal mine expansion, with both sides accusing each other mutually violent.
In an operation that began on Wednesday, hundreds of law enforcement officers cleared around 300 militants from the western German hamlet of Lützerath.
The evacuation of these people was initially supposed to last for weeks, but the police said on Sunday that only two of them remained in this village, holed up in an underground.
“There are no more activists in the Lützerath region,” she assured.
PHOTO WOLFGANG RATTAY, REUTERS
Legal proceedings have been launched against approximately 150 people.
The venue, which has become a symbol of resistance to fossil fuels, had attracted thousands of protesters on Saturday, including Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg.
The organizers of the movement claimed that 35,000 people had gathered there then, while the police put the number at 15,000.
These protested against the extension of an open pit lignite mine and therefore the disappearance of Lützerath, in the Rhine basin, between Düsseldorf and Cologne, supporting the militants who occupied the site.
Violence
Several demonstrators on Sunday accused the police of having “violently” repressed their rally the day before, which degenerated into clashes during which dozens of police and demonstrators were injured.
A spokeswoman for the protest organizers, Indigo Drau, accused police at a press conference of “pure violence”, saying officers beat activists “unrestrainedly”, including hitting them in the head.
The Lützerath lebt collective! reported on Saturday dozens of injuries, some serious, in the ranks of the protesters. Twenty of them were hospitalized, according to a nurse from this group of activists, Birte Schramm.
Police said on their side on Sunday that some 70 of their officers had been injured the day before.
“We were targeted by projectiles, with stones, mud, fireworks,” spokesman Andreas Müller told AFP.
Several police vehicles were damaged, particularly by stone throwing, and a large number of police vehicle tires were punctured, police said.
Investigations have been opened in about 150 cases, she said, for resisting police officers, property damage or breach of public order.
Twelve people in total were arrested or taken into custody.
Many militants had hidden inside tree houses and on the roofs of buildings in order to complicate evacuation operations.
The situation on the ground had become “very calm” again on Sunday, according to the police.
The evacuation operation in Lützerath was politically delicate for the coalition of Social Democrat Olaf Scholz, which governs with environmentalists, accused by activists of having betrayed their commitments.
The government considers the extension of the mine managed by the giant RWE necessary for Germany’s energy security, which must compensate for the interruption of Russian gas supplies, a compelling reason disputed by opponents, in the name of the fight against fossil energies.