Greta Thunberg Forcibly Removed From Anti-Coal Protest by German Cops
‘THIS STRUGGLE IS NOT OVER’
Police in riot gear confronted the crowd of thousands as it neared Luetzerath, a hamlet threatened with destruction in favor of an opencast lignite mine.
Greta Thunberg, the 20-year-old Swedish climate activist, joined thousands of demonstrators in Germany on Saturday, marching through mud and rain to protest the razing of a village to expand a coal mine. Before being physically escorted away by riot police after failing to comply with an order to leave the site at Luetzerath, the tiny hamlet that activists have been occupying for more than two years, Thunberg addressed the crowd. “The carbon is still in the ground. We are still here. Luetzerath is still there,” she said. “And as long as the carbon is in the ground, this struggle is not over.” A total of nine activists were hospitalized after officers reportedly used water cannons and batons in a bid to evict and disperse the protesters, according to German news agencies. The protest camp was erected as a challenge to the planned expansion of a nearby Garzweiler opencast lignite mine, a compromise made by the German government and energy giant RWE. Authorities have called the plan vital to Germany’s energy security, but researchers have suggested a number of alternatives, including the use of other coal fields—at greater cost to RWE—or the increase of renewable power production.
