Shortly before the police special forces climb a ladder onto the wooden shack on stilts, an activist explains what this is all about. “This is where the fight against climate change will be decided,” says the woman, who doesn’t want to be recognized.
Wearing a white body suit and an FFP2 mask, she stands at a height of a good 2.5 meters on the “bicycle workshop”, as the climate protection activists call the wooden house on stilts, and watches the police on the ground close a circle around her and her six fellow campaigners. “I’m a bit tense,” she says, then barricades herself between floorboards and tarpaulins. Ready for their last disruptive action in Lützerath.
Lützerath, the abandoned hamlet on the edge of the Garzweiler lignite opencast mine, has gained enormous importance for many people these days. For the police, who are on site with more than 1000 emergency services on the second day of the evacuation, it remains a difficult and highly complex operation.
Here you can see a video by Tagesspiegel reporter Felix Hackenbruch on the current situation in Lützerath:
For the climate movement, the place has become a symbol of a failed energy policy with which Germany is on the way to missing the 1.5 degree target. Climate activist Luisa Neubauer even speaks of the “epicenter of the global fight for climate justice”. Lützerath has become a home for the activist who hid from the police in the stilt house on Thursday.
But the small village will not have a future. For the energy company RWE, which owns the site and wants to get hold of the millions of tons of lignite, Lützerath has not been a village since Wednesday, but a company site.
The company has built a long fence around the small village. Only the police, paramedics and the press come in, while the climate activists are brought out one by one.
But on Thursday, the operation was delayed. The bad weather is making things difficult for the emergency services. It rains almost continuously, the mud is ankle-deep. The gusts of wind prove to be even more problematic, making the police rescue from the tree houses a dangerous undertaking.
This is much faster than we had hoped
Mara Sauer from the “Lützerath Leben” initiative on the eviction
The authorities are proceeding meticulously but unstoppably. They try to get the activists out of the trees using lifting platforms and cranes. As soon as a tree house is emptied, it is destroyed by RWE employees with excavators and chainsaws. Shovel tractors unload the rubble of the protest camp in unison.
“It’s going much faster than we had hoped,” says Mara Sauer from the “Lützerath Lives” initiative. She criticized the massive police presence and the fact that trees were still being felled and occupied courtyards cleared even in the dark.
“It’s not about safety here, it’s just about speed,” said Sauer, who has lived in Lützerath for a year and a half. Living together in solidarity in the protest camp has shown her that there are alternatives to the capitalist system, she says while an old oak tree is being felled behind her.
A few meters away, Kathrin Henneberger, member of the Greens, stands and watches as the police advance into the Paula homestead. The presence and speed of the police also surprised the former climate activist: “It’s probably only a matter of days,” she says, looking at the barn roof.
Several activists huddle there in the rain. Pyrotechnics and stones were repeatedly thrown at the police from the building in the morning. A policewoman was injured in the leg, another had suffered a blast trauma, the Aachen police said in the evening.
Otherwise, it remains mostly peaceful on Thursday, even at a protest march outside of Lützerath with around 800 participants, including Luisa Neubauer, there are only minor scuffles and sit-ins. Shortly after the police climbed the “bicycle workshop” in the protest camp, they also drag the unknown climate activist outside.
An officer throws her backpack into the mud, but the woman remains stoic in her blockade. “You are not alone,” shout activists from other tree houses. Then several police officers heave the woman down and carry her away. Another obstacle less. Activists are said to be hiding in tunnels, a few of the last buildings are still occupied, but they probably won’t stop the police for long either. Lützerath’s time is running out.
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