Hambach Forest, Germany: Ecodefenders blockade several targets in Europe’s largest open-cast mine

The last week­end saw a series of block­ades, that halt­ed work in sev­er­al parts of the Ham­bach open-cast-coal-mine.

8.10.15

The last week­end saw a series of block­ades, that halt­ed work in sev­er­al parts of the Ham­bach open-cast-coal-mine.

On Sat­ur­day morn­ing, at around 2:30, sev­er­al peo­ple occu­pied on of the huge exca­va­tors and stopped it for sev­er­al hours.

One day lat­er, around the same time, four peo­ple stopped the two main con­vey­or-belts that are used to load the coal onto the trains, with one group climb­ing around on top of one, while the oth­er two peo­ple locked-on to the struc­ture of the oth­er. After being hosed with water for sev­er­al hours by angry mine work­ers, all peo­ple were evict­ed at around 11:00 and tak­en to the police sta­tion in Düren, where they were released about one hour lat­er, with­out giv­ing their iden­ti­ties.

On Mon­day morn­ing, again at around half past two, anoth­er group of peo­ple occu­pied on of the giant exca­va­tors, again being evict­ed a cou­ple hours lat­er and realeased with­out ID-check.

This was fol­lowed by jet anoth­er con­vey­or-belt block­ade, which was evict­ed more bru­tal­ly this time. One of the per­sons is still in police cus­tody.

It seems the police and the ener­gy com­pa­ny RWE are get­ting more and more annoyed by activists con­stant­ly slip­ping through the holes in their secu­ri­ty net.

For more infor­ma­tion check out: hambachforest.blogsport.de