Officers have ordered 1,000 activists traveling by train to clear Düren station. They are trying to make their way to Hambacher Forest where a massive anti-coal protest is planned for the weekend.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/C. Gateau
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Environmental protestors and police faced off in the western German city of Düren on Friday as about 1,000 activists were on their way to the Hambach Forest for a major demonstration planned for this weekend.
Officers dragged demonstrators away after they refused to clear the station. Train travel was disrupted between the cities of Aachen and Cologne.
Some 5,000 activists are expected to show up at the "Ende Gelände" or "End the Site" protest camp over the weekend.
The train from Prague and Vienna
The specially-commissioned train began its journey in the Czech city of Prague, traveled through the Austrian capital of Vienna and the through several German cities, picking up protestors along the way.
According to police, the activists were asked to get off the train in Düren after it became too difficult to perform security checks in the packed cars.
The protestors filed an injunction against the police controls with a court in Aachen, but that court sided with the police.
Now, they have taken the cased to the Higher Administrative Court in Münster and are still waiting on a reponse. On social media, demonstrators wrote that they were taken to holding cells in Aachen for having stripes of face paint, with police claiming that the makeup made it difficult to identify them.
Years of Hambacher Forest defense
"Ende Gelände" is the latest iteration of a long-standing protest against the destruction of a large part of the Hambacher Forest, one of Germany's oldest and most biodiverse forests, to make way for a coal mine built by energy giant RWE.
Activists built treehouses in the forest and refused to leave, sometimes for months on end, since the project was announced in 2012.
Police finally received permission to clear the treehouses in September, ramping up rallies against the coal mine. Journalist Steffen Meyn fell through a rudimentary bridge between two treehouses and died.
On October 5, the Higher Administrative Court in the city of Münster ruled that RWE had to stop development of the coal mine immediately, while scientists prepared a report on what the effects the operation of the mine would have on local bat populations.
A final court decision is not expected to come before 2020.
6 years of coal protest coming to an end at Germany's Hambach forest?
Activists have uprooted their lives to save a German forest from being sacrificed to a gigantic coal mine. Now, German police are overseeing the clearing of the Hambach forest as the plans for mining go ahead.
Image: DW/G. Rueter
Primal forest
At the heart of Europe, in western Germany, near the border to France and Belgium, a scrap of ancient forest holds thousand-year-old trees along with abundant wildlife. But there's another species living there in the forest as well — our own.
Image: DW/G. Rueter
Life among the treetops
About 150 people currently live in what's left of Hambach forest, many in makeshift tree houses. Although living in a tree house may appear idyllic, many of the environmental activists have uprooted their lives for the better part of six years — living without electricity and running water — to protect the forest, and take a stance against the power of the fossil fuel industry.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/Bildfunk/C. Gateau
Evictions begin
Several hundred police officers accompanied RWE workers for protection as they visited the forest on Wednesday, September 5, to expel the protesters in preparation for clearing. Although the operation was mostly peaceful, one activist was arrested after resisting police.
Image: DW/I. Banos-Ruiz
Nonviolent resistance
Activists joke about their "dangerous weapons," such as an empty fire extinguisher. Just days before the police action on September 5, Herbert Reul, the interior minister for the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, warned that police and RWE staff in the Hambach forest were dealing with "extremely violent left-wing extremists." Members of the protest group have denied Reul's description.
Image: DW/G. Rueter
Not the first forest confrontation
Over the years, police have clashed with protesters in the Hambach forest. In 2017, police employed pepper spray to disperse protesters in advance of planned logging. The looming eviction is likely to result in the largest confrontation there yet.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/M.Becker
Trees for coal
Here is the result of a recent RWE clearing campaign, which ran from October 2016 to March 2017. In the background, the smokestacks of the Niederaussem power station can be seen. With a CO2 output of more than 29 million tons yearly, this is Europe's third-dirtiest power plant. Due to massive toxic emissions such as mercury and sulfur, it is also considered Germany's second-most-toxic power plant.
Image: Elian Hadj-Hamdi
'Critical turning point' for climate policy
"Clumsy" has lived among the treetops in the Hambach forest since the resistance against the RWE coalmine project began in 2012. He believes the battle over the forest is a critical turning point for German climate policy, and the government's decision is one between "giving in to the lignite hardliners, [or] protecting our life support basis on this planet."
Image: DW/G. Rueter
Small forest with big stakes
Only about 10 percent of the once sprawling Hambach forest has survived the mine's onslaught. What's left appears miniscule in comparison to the vast expanse of the mine, which already covers about 85 square kilometers (33 square miles). But environmentalists say the forest holds enormous ecological value, and is home to abundant and biodiverse ecology, including endangered animal species.
Ever-hungry coal industry
The Hambach mine, located between Aachen and Cologne, is Germany's largest open-cast mine. Here, RWE uses enormous excavators to extract brown coal, also known as lignite, from the earth. Lignite is among the fossil fuels that emit the most carbon dioxide when burned. What remains of Hambach forest is the last bastion in a long battle against the expansion of the mine.
Image: Michael Goergens
Save the forest, save the world
Environmental activists have undertaken nonviolent resistance against the RWE coal mine expansion for more than six years. Through their actions, they claim to not only want to save the Hambach forest from destruction, but also send a message to the world about the dangerous consequences of prioritizing fossil fuel extraction over important ecological sites.
Image: DW/G. Rueter
Global support
Activists from all over the world have supported the action by staying for days or weeks at a time. Over the past six years, activists have literally built up an alternative community within the forest. Although it is still unclear what exactly will happen in the struggle between the protesters and the fossil fuel giant, potential eviction is an ever-present possibility for the forest dwellers.
