Status: 13.09.2023, 18:01 p.m.
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Participants sit in front of the main train station during a protest march by the climate protection group "Letzte Generation". © Sebastian Christoph Gollnow/dpa
After a long break, the climate protection group Letzte Generation wants to become active again in Berlin. To kick things off, there will be a protest march - and the first blockades.
Berlin - After months of announcements, the climate protection group Letzte Generation has started new weeks of action in Berlin. On Wednesday, several hundred supporters demonstrated in the city center. The demonstration, which deliberately moved very slowly to stop traffic, started at noon in the Moabit district and moved through the city center near the government district. The police spoke of around 200 participants. In the late afternoon, there were road blockades in the area of Europaplatz at the main train station.
In vain, the police and the leaders of the meeting had called on the demonstrators to get up from the ground and continue the march, said a police spokesman. The meeting had therefore also been declared over by the organizers. Nevertheless, a number of people continued to block the road. After three unsuccessful requests to leave the square, police officers finally intervened and carried the climate activists away. Around 120 police officers were on site, the spokesman said.
The police had accompanied the entire demonstration march of the Last Generation. Banners read, for example: "Away from fossil fuels - towards justice". "Turning point - there are many of us - and the city is becoming more and more orange with each passing day from now on," the climate protection group said on the Internet. The color referred to the high-visibility vests that many of them wear during roadblocks.
In an open letter to Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD), the group wrote: "We are in the middle of the climate catastrophe. Every day, people die as a result. We are witnessing how crucial elements are beginning to tip over, how the Amazon is dying, the Gulf Stream is drying up, the Arctic is melting." Addressing Scholz, it continued: "They do not dare to initiate the turnaround. (...) Because you don't dare to say and do things that are unpopular at first. (...) We demand that you no longer shirk your responsibility." What is needed is a comprehensive change.
At the end of the protest march, participants dressed up as Scholz and pushed fictitious members of an expert council on climate off the stage. This should underline how "unbelievably disrespectful" the Chancellor is with scientists, the group said.
On Friday, the activists want to support the climate strike and a demonstration by Fridays for Future. From next Monday (18.9.) the Last Generation wants to start numerous protest actions and also road blockades. "Hundreds of people" would come to Berlin from all over Germany, it was said. "We will not leave Berlin until there is a political turnaround."
The group calls for Germany to abandon fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas from 2030. The German government is aiming for a climate-neutral economy by 2045.
Since spring 2022, the Last Generation has been protesting in many German cities with road blockades in which participants glue themselves to the roadway. Drivers often react angrily and sometimes with violence. The demonstrators are regularly removed from the streets by the police, many have been convicted of coercion and other offenses. Dpa