Climate activists vow to continue anti-coal mine protests in Germany

BERLIN (AA) – German climate activists vowed to continue anti-coal mine protests in the western village of Lutzerath after dozens of protesters injured in a heavy handed police crackdown on Saturday.

“We’ll continue to our resistance in the coming days,” Mara Sauer, spokesperson of the activists told Anadolu, adding that plans for coal-mine expansion threatens environment and climate goals.

“We are staying in Lutzerath. The coal mining here, it should be stopped. This is the source of the climate crisis. That has to stop,” she said.

More than 1,500 police officers are deployed in the area since Tuesday to forcibly evict climate activists from treehouses and buildings they occupied in Lutzerath to make way for the expansion of a nearby coal mine.

The police removed hundreds of activists from the village in the past couple of days, but several activists were still resisting eviction in tree houses and underground tunnels.

On Saturday, thousands of demonstrators attended a rally near the village to protest the German government and the coal-mine expansion plans, as organizers said the crowd was 35,000 strong.

Dozens of climate activists were injured after the police used pepper spray and batons to disperse the demonstrators. Activists accused the police of using excessive force against peaceful protesters.

Lutzerath was occupied by anti-coal activists for two years and became a symbol for environmentalist groups demanding an end to the use of coal and fossil fuels.

Environmental groups had hoped the village would be spared from excavation after Chancellor Olaf Scholz's center-left coalition, including the pro-environment Green party, took office in 2021, pledging to phase out the use of coal.

Russia's war in Ukraine, however, triggered an energy crisis, forcing Berlin to restart mothballed coal plants to secure the country's power needs.

The German energy company RWE is planning to demolish the village to expand the Garzweiler coal mine to extract 280 million tons of lignite by 2030.

*Anadolu Agency's Mesut Zeyrek contributed to this report from Lutzerath.