Germany: An Update from Hambach Forest Defenders

June 2nd, 2015

The defence of the the Mil­lenar­i­an Ham­bach­er For­est against the encroching RWE open cast lig­nite mine con­tin­ues with activist-build tow­ers and live-in bar­ri­cades.  The Ham­bach­er For­est is not only one of the last Mil­lenar­i­an Forests in Europe but also the largest on the edge of most­ly defor­est­ed area of Ruhr Val­ley and the Bel­gium, Nether­lands, Lux­em­burg region hence its impor­tance to bio­di­ver­si­ty and ani­mal migra­tion cor­ri­dors.

The lig­nite mine fought through direct action meth­ods by the activist liv­ing in the for­est for the last 3 years has been devour­ing towns, vil­lages, whole forests and drain­ing the watertable for up to 70 kilo­me­ters  and is also the largest in west­ern europe and Europe’s biggest net CO2 emmiter.

The scale of the mine itself being 12km across and near­ly half a kil­lome­ter deep con­jures analo­gies of Mor­dor or Sci­Fi Prison plan­et with the dig­gers  being the world’s largest machines feed­ing the con­vey­or belts deliv­er­ing the coal to rail links sup­ply­ing the pow­er plants on the edge of the mine itself and through­out this region .  This in turn pales in com­par­i­son to the glob­al and exter­nal­ized costs of lig­nite as a cli­mate chaos agent and a num­ber one source of mer­cury con­t­a­m­i­na­tion in worlds oceans.

The Ham­bach For­est Strug­gle con­tin­ues to expe­ri­ence peri­od­ic police intru­sions, arrests and desc­truc­tion of bar­ri­cades which are pro­tect­ing three for­est tree-sits: Oak­town, Beech­town, and Crusty­Town  which are spread through­out the for­est.  The arrest result in sol­i­dar­i­ty actions and demon­stra­tions and rel­a­tive­ly short releas­es.

This is not some­thing that can be said about the irre­versible habi­tat destruc­tion that con­tin­ues day and night and sad­ly after par­tial vic­to­ry of hav­ing the costs of evic­tions and police actions being deferred to the RWE con­cern  the Ger­man Forestry depart­ment start­ed fil­ing com­plains about the for­est being block­ad­ed against the machin­ery send to destroy it and the tax­pay­er and the Ger­man State resumed again pick­ing up the bill for the repres­sion of eco-activists and eco­log­i­cal destru­c­ion.

For that rea­son we urge all who choose to pur­sue the avenues of civic action to put grass­roots pres­sure on the appro­pri­ate­ly named Fed­er­al Min­istry of Food and Agri­cul­ture in Bonn (www.verbraucherlotse.de) Mon­day to Thurs­day from 9:00 bis 17:00 Tele­fon­num­mer 02 28 – 24 25 26 27, per E‑Mail  info@verbraucherlotse.de, 53168 Bonn und unter der Fax-Num­mer 02 28 – 68 45 72 20.

 

 

For those in the strug­gle to pro­tect the Earth through direct action we urge you to vis­it us and fol­low the strug­gle and become a part of glob­al com­mu­ni­ty of resis­tance.

Our present demand and wish list includes as always plan­e­tary eco-jus­tice fol­lowed by walkie talkies, 12v bat­ter­ies and solar pan­els.

In Sol­i­dar­i­ty,

Ham­bach For­est Defend­ers!