During the evacuation of the occupied lignite town of Lützerath, the emergency services came across underground corridors in which activists had hidden themselves. According to the police, it is not yet clear how long it will take to get people out. Because you don’t know how stable the floor constructions are and how the air supply is.
“We don’t know how stable these underground soil structures are. We also don’t know how the air supply is there,” says Aachen police chief Dirk Weinspach. Special forces from the energy company RWE and the technical aid organization are now working on “how the rescue can be carried out in an appropriate manner”.
Fence to stop further activists
On Thursday, countless wooden huts and barricades belonging to the activists were razed to the ground by excavators. All but one house has been evacuated, as have most of the tree houses. The RWE group, which now owns Lützerath and wants to extract the lignite under the site for power generation, has built a huge fence around the entire site. This is to prevent more protesters from arriving. That did not stop the activists from neighboring Keyenberg. The police spoke of about 800 participants.
They want to prevent coal mining under Lützerath and warn of serious consequences for the climate. The squatters had already had to part with the symbolic Duisserner Hof on Thursday morning, which the owner, known as the ‘last farmer of Lützerath’, had defended to the last against expropriation. The building had become a powerful symbol of resistance to the opencast Garzweiler lignite mine.
Mostly nonviolent protest
The squatters usually let themselves be carried away without much resistance. Attacks on security forces, for example with fireworks, or emergency vehicles remained the exception. Even from the tree houses up to ten meters high, squatters could be knocked down without much resistance. Police officers then cut the mounting cables, causing the treehouses to fall with a crash and break into many separate pieces.
A climate activist who perseveres in a tree house posted a video on Twitter expressing his disappointment with the logging work: “It’s bitter, bitter, bitter that trees are being cut down during the climate crisis so that lignite can be burned, whatever… planets destroyed.”
Greens from Düsseldorf and well-known climate activist Luisa Neubauer took part in the protest. Greta Thunberg from Sweden has also announced for Saturday. Neubauer – who had already been taken away – accused the police on Thursday that it was incomprehensible and dangerous to continue the evacuation late into the night. This, in turn, justified the fact that they had to provide aid to chained and imprisoned activists.
Source: Krone
I am Wallace Jones, an experienced journalist. I specialize in writing for the world section of Today Times Live. With over a decade of experience, I have developed an eye for detail when it comes to reporting on local and global stories. My passion lies in uncovering the truth through my investigative skills and creating thought-provoking content that resonates with readers worldwide.
