Hambach Forest: New Treesit, Tree Felling Equipment Halted

Noname

Novem­ber 5th, 2014

Noname

Novem­ber 5th, 2014

The Ham­bach or Ham­bach­er for­est is locat­ed near Cologne, Ger­many and is under threat from an adja­cent lig­nite (brown coal) mine expan­sion. The occu­pa­tion to keep the trees stand­ing has been ongo­ing for three years.

100 meters dis­tant from a new tree occu­pa­tion in the cut­ting area of RWE a har­vester has been squat­ted to block the ongo­ing fellings. Both occu­pa­tions are part of the cam­paign „hands off the trees!“ (ger­man: „Kein Baum fällt“), that con­tin­ues unabat­ed­ly in the light of last week’s repres­sion.
We defend the for­est against your vio­lence!

Since Thurs­day one impris­oned com­rade is await­ing tri­al in Aachen. Please con­tact us to express your sol­i­dar­i­ty via post mail.

UPDATES

14:00 Uhr – RWE per­son­el starts cut­tings near a tree, that has been occu­pied four days ago.
15:00 Uhr – Activists express the immi­nent dan­ger of peo­ple in the trees.
15:30 Uhr – A har­vester is blocked by four per­sons.
16:00 Uhr – Pri­vate secu­ri­ty guards retreat from the tree occu­pa­tion to gath­er at the squat­ted vehi­cle. They are armed with iron ton­fas as usu­al.

forest destruction stopped for several hours +++ 14 arrestees +++ 1 activist remains in Jail +++ Grubenblick-Occupation evicted +++ cruelty against activists at police stations +++ Meadow-occupation raided by police +++

 

After the events on Thurs­day (10/30/2014), 13 of 14 arrest­ed activist are free again. Most of them remained at the police sta­tions for about 24 hours. One per­son is still in jail, prob­a­bly because of extreme­ly severe accu­sa­tions. We will try to put up the pris­on­er sup­port for him on the occu­pa­tion.

Some arrest­ed activists were forced to give their fin­ger­prints by vio­lence. 6 had to give their DNA to the court. While raid­ing the mead­ow occu­pa­tion, the police con­fis­cat­ed sev­er­al items they defined as ille­gal. Some small elec­tron­i­cal devices were stolen by police „in pri­vate“. 5 climb­ing har­ness­es and sev­er­al mobile phones were con­fis­cat­ed from the arrest­ed peo­ple.

While the only tree­house which was locat­ed in the this year clearcut area has been evict­ed, the Ham­bach For­est remains occu­pied at two oth­er spots.