German Police Crack Down on Coal Mine Protesters Barricaded in Abandoned Village

German police have moved to clear out coal mine protesters barricaded in an abandoned village who are opposed to the expansion of the mine.

Law enforcement personnel in riot gear moved on Wednesday morning into Luetzerath, which housed hundreds of climate activists who barricaded themselves up. They were attempting to prevent the expansion of the nearby Garzweiler coal mine that is run by energy firm RWE.

German Police Crack Down on Climate Activists

For the past two years, activists have tried to protect the village from being bulldozed in an attempt to make way for the opencast lignite mine. It has been a standoff that underscored the tensions surrounding Germany's climate policy.

Environmentalists argued that the bulldozing of Luetzerath would lead to huge amounts of greenhouse gas emissions. However, the German government and RWE said that coal was needed to ensure the country's energy security.

On Wednesday, the protesters formed human chains, made a makeshift barricade using old containers, and chanted, "We are here, we are loud because you are stealing our future." Some of the demonstrators also threw beer bottles at police officers, who said that Molotov cocktails and stones were also thrown at them, as per Al Jazeera.

A reporter for Aljazeera, Step Vaessen, was at Luetzerath and said that protesters were "holding firm" against law enforcement personnel. She added that police patrolled the streets and there were a few houses in the village that remained standing. The situation came as villages left some time ago but have since been replaced by activists.

Vaessen said that the village has become an "international symbol for the fight against climate change." This was mainly due to dozens of villages already being destroyed in the last few years in order to make way for the mine expansion.

Two days prior to the incident, a regional court upheld an earlier ruling to clear the village, which is located in the brown-coal district of the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Energy firm RWE, which owns the village's land and houses, on Wednesday, said that it would begin demolishing the remaining buildings.

Failure to Transition to Greener Forms of Energy

According to Reuters, the climate protesters are expected to be joined by climate activist Greta Thunberg who allegedly plans to join the demonstration on Saturday, said a spokesperson for the Luetzerathlebt environmentalist group.

In a statement, economy minister Robert Habeck of the Greens has called for no further violence after police and protesters scuffled. Law enforcement authorities said that the standoff could last for several weeks.

When police moved in, some protesters went to the roofs or the windows of the abandoned village buildings, chanting and shouting slogans. Other demonstrators hung suspended from wires and wooden frames or were holed up in treehouses to make it harder for officers to dislodge them.

A spokesperson for the activists, Mara Sauer, said that law enforcement took the first aid team out of the camp by force. They added that only some were able to stay in hiding after the incident.

The encampment of protesters in the village once numbered roughly 2,000, but continuous police efforts have brought them down to around 200 as of Wednesday. Demonstrators continue to criticize the government over its lack of ability to transition away from fossil fuel sources to greener forms of energy, Fox News reported.