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With occupations and blockades, thousands of climate activists demonstrated in the Rhenish coalfield for an immediate exit from coal and gas.
The alliance "Ende Ende", which has been protesting in the Rhineland every autumn since 2015, has called for civil disobedience.
According to "Endegebiet" this time around 3000 people took part - divided into 16 action groups.
Andreas Müller, Aachen Police
"In contrast to previous years, we currently have the situation that there are many smaller climate camps around the opencast mine. That means we don't have a central point from which the actions start. We have been setting up since this morning established that the individual fingers, as they call themselves, have set in motion and are now trying to occupy infrastructure in various places around the opencast mine, which has already been partially successful. "
Near Aachen, people climbed onto the coal bunker of the Weisweiler lignite power station, and an inn was reopened in the village of Keyenberg, which the energy company RWE wants to excavate for coal mining.
This action group was arrested by the police 150 meters from the Garzweiler opencast mine.
Now the activists are being taken into custody.
Because of the protest actions, numerous S-Bahn and regional trains were canceled in the region - apparently also because the police blocked individual train stations to prevent the activists from penetrating the mine.
This time, the protests were directed not only against lignite, but also against natural gas, which is just as harmful to the climate: around 150 people gathered in front of a gas-fired power plant near Düsseldorf, and the construction site for a gas pipeline was occupied.
"Fridays For Future" also took part in the day of action, the climate movement had called for a demonstration at the Garzweiler II opencast mine at noon.