At a German coal mine protest, Greta Thunberg was detained.
Greta Thunberg, a climate activist, is taken away by police after a protest close to the German community of Luetzerath, which is scheduled for demolition.
During a protest near a German town being destroyed to make room for a coal mine expansion, Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg was taken away and detained.
To support protests against the destruction of Luetzerath, which has come to represent resistance against fossil fuels, Thunberg has been in Germany for a number of days.
Images from Tuesday showed the protester being picked up by police wearing helmets and then being brought to a waiting bus. The person was wearing all black.
Activists were detained, according to a police spokeswoman, after they “broke away from the demonstration” and raced toward the edge of an open pit. A decision regarding the protestors held in jail will be made later as officials worked to identify them.
The spokeswoman clarified that the activists were not actually in custody.
Thunberg marched in front of a parade on Saturday as part of a massive protest against the hamlet’s demolition that included tens of thousands of participants. The German government “making bargains and compromises with fossil fuel firms,” she claimed, was “shameful.”
The police attempt to remove them came to an end on Monday when the final two climate activists who had been occupying the village to stop it from being razed fled their self-built underground tunnel.
In an effort to stop the nearby Garzweiler open-cast coal mine from expanding, about 300 protestors had taken over the hamlet, seizing out vacant buildings and setting up positions in the woods.
Stop coal
As preparations for the enlargement of the mine, one of the largest in Europe and run by energy company RWE, continue forward, Luetzerath’s original occupants have been gone for a while. To clear the protest camp, police started an operation last week.
The operation ended despite the massive protest on Saturday, which saw thousands of participants raise signs reading “Stop coal” and “Luetzerath lives!”
Following altercations between police and protesters that left both parties hurt, protest organizers accused authorities of “violence.”
In accordance with a compromise pact negotiated with the administration of Social Democrat Chancellor Olaf Scholz, RWE is authorized to expand the mine. According to the October agreement, five other villages will not be affected by the demolition of Luetzerath.
Additionally, RWE consented to end coal-powered electricity generation in western Germany eight years sooner than originally anticipated, by 2030.
Germany has turned to coal and restarted idled reactors as a result of Russia’s gas supply being cut off during the invasion of Ukraine.
The mine’s extension, according to supporters, is essential to ensuring Germany’s future access to electricity. However, activists contend that removing the coal will result in Germany missing its obligations under the crucial Paris Agreement on climate change.
Numerous climate activists also occupied other locations in western Germany, including a state government building in Dusseldorf and a prominent thoroughfare in the city of Cologne.
The coal railroad tracks leading to the Neurath power plant were also taken by a group of roughly 120 demonstrators close to Rommerskirchen, according to the police and energy firm RWE.
The dpa news agency in Germany claimed that those who refused to leave the tracks were taken away.
