According to the police, more than 100 police officers were injured during the evacuation of the settlement, 80 of them on Saturday. How many were injured without outside influence is currently not broken down, a police spokesman said on Monday on request. On the part of activists and demonstrators, the number of injured since the beginning of the police action on January 8 was estimated at around 300, of which 120 to 90 were injured on Saturday alone.
At the Hambach open pit mine, some 20 kilometers away, an excavator was engaged in the early hours of the morning, an RWE spokesman announced on Monday. Furthermore, climate activists rappelled down in wheelchairs from a road bridge near Lützerath. A spokesman for RWE said the bulldozer in the Rhine lignite mining area had stopped operating and the police had been informed.
According to the protest group “Counter-attack – for the good life”, eight activists occupied the bulldozer. The action intends to show solidarity with the people of the village of Lützerath. The group also criticized the police’s actions at the site and asked for the socialization of energy production.
After the departure of the two tunnel occupants, the Rhenish lignite city has been completely cleaned since Sunday afternoon. Most of the buildings had already been demolished on Sunday, after complete demolition energy company RWE wants to excavate the coal underneath. Decommissioning is expected to take another eight to ten days, a company spokesman told the “Rheinische Post” (Monday edition). “In March or April, the mine could reach the old village and dig.”
Meanwhile, activists and police accuse each other of violence. North Rhine-Westphalia Interior Minister Herbert Reul (CDU) protected the police on Sunday night. This worked “highly professionally”, he said on the ARD talk show “Anne Will”. German activist Luisa Neubauer contradicted this, from her point of view the operation was disproportionately violent. But he will see to it that all cases of inappropriate police violence are investigated. “We’ve seen one or two movies on the web where we’re like, ‘This doesn’t look good.’
Climate activist Luisa Neubauer contradicted this and accused the police of a disproportionately violent raid on the show. “It didn’t look professional at all,” she criticized – and pointed out that, according to a paramedic of the protesters, many people were seriously injured by the police. The protest against this was peaceful.
According to the police, around 1,000 “disturbers”, mostly masked, tried to penetrate the isolated area of Lützerath on the sidelines of the large demonstration. The police used water cannons, batons and pepper spray. Twelve people were arrested or detained.
On the part of the German Greens, the agreement on the mining of lignite in the west and therefore also on the evacuation of Lützerath was defended as necessary, the Minister of Economy and Climate Protection Robert Habeck described the decision on coal as a ” good decision for climate protection”. through saved CO2 emissions. In return, coal phase-out, which was brought forward by eight years to 2030, has been achieved.