Cologne Cathedral: Climate protest by Extinction Rebellion during trade fair - police intervene

Created: 01/07/2022Updated: 01/07/2022, 9:43 AM

From: Lukas Rogalla

Visitors to the Christmas vespers in Cologne Cathedral © Henning Kaiser / dpa

Extinction Rebellion protests in Cologne Cathedral - shortly before the start of a mass.

Two Swiss cathedral people are injured.

Cologne - Activists disrupted a mass in Cologne Cathedral with a climate protest action on Thursday evening (January 6th, 2022).

Twelve men and women wanted to draw attention to the destruction of the environment with banners and loudspeakers.

Before the start of the service, led by an auxiliary bishop, they lay down in the center aisle of the church, said a spokeswoman for the Cologne police at the request of the German press agency.

Cologne Cathedral: Climate activists protest and disrupt the fair

The multiple requests of the employees to leave the cathedral, they did not comply.

After all, Swiss cathedral people tried to get the activists who did not offer resistance out of the church, it said.

Two people from Dom Swiss were injured in the process - rescue workers treated the two on the back, it said.

According to a report by the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, the activists of the Extinction Rebellion environmental protection movement, which draws attention primarily through the means of civil disobedience, were involved.

"In the Cologne Cathedral we turned to the church community, who watched paralyzed while we humans were exploiting the planet until it was unusable, tearing down villages and churches in order to dig fossil fuels out of the earth," wrote the Extinction Rebellion local group in Bochum on Thursday evening on Twitter.

Extinction Rebellion: Climate protest in Cologne Cathedral

The pictures show activists holding up a banner that reads: “RWE: We destroy everything for profit.

Hand in hand with politics. ”In addition to destroyed houses, an open-cast coal mine and a power station are painted.

The activists refer to the energy company RWE.

Several villages such as Keyenberg are to give way to RWE's Garzweiler open-cast lignite mine * or have already been destroyed.

The protest is directed against the continuation of the opencast mine.

The activists are calling for a speedy exit from coal.

"Today on Epiphany the cathedral was jam-packed," said Extinction Rebellion Bochum, explaining the action.

“The church, which actually“ wants to preserve creation ”, is not fulfilling its responsibility.

And we made that clear today! ”It continued.

The police called in are now investigating trespassing and filed criminal charges against the twelve activists.

"A violation of the assembly law must also be checked," said the police spokeswoman.

There were no arrests after the action at Cologne Cathedral.

(lrg / dpa) *