Clearing a single tree house can take a whole day

In Lützerath, the squatters simply continue to build, although the place will soon be razed to the ground. In the wooded protest camp with dozens of tree houses and huts, they have now mounted solar panels on the three-storey main tower and can produce their own electricity. A few days ago, Lützerath was disconnected from the regular power grid.

It is an unmistakable sign that the energy company RWE, as the property owner, and the Aachen police are preparing to evict the area soon. There is a lot of lignite under the site that is to be used for power generation. The bucket wheel excavators in the Garzweiler opencast mine are maybe a hundred meters away.

The eco-activists protest for the preservation of Lützerath and see the climate goals in danger if more coal is excavated. However, they are staying there illegally. The responsible district authority in Heinsberg has now issued a general decree forbidding the stay in Lützerath and has asked all squatters to leave the place, "otherwise, from January 10, 2023, administrative enforcement measures can be expected to be taken through the exercise of direct coercion".

Heinsberg's District Administrator Stephan Pusch (CDU) wants a "peaceful end to the occupation of Lützerath". Likewise, North Rhine-Westphalia's Interior Minister Herbert Reul (CDU) and Economics Minister Mona Neubaur (Greens), who initiated the eviction request. But the squatters don't want to voluntarily leave their tree houses and the remaining buildings. Instead, environmental organizations and initiatives are calling for nationwide support for the squatters. Therefore, it amounts to an evacuation with several thousand police officers.

At the beginning of December, a hundred police officers turned up in Lützerath and took a look at the area.

The operations control center in Aachen wants to be able to assess exactly what the officials are going to face and arm themselves against surprises. "We have to be careful that nothing happens to the police and squatters," Reul recently emphasized in the WELT interview.

So far, around 130 people have stayed in Lützerath. The majority is attributed to the "bourgeois spectrum", a smaller part to the violent, left-wing autonomous scene. The number of those present could increase significantly through public calls until the start of the eviction.

The Aachen police are based on experiences during the clearing of the neighboring Hambach Forest at the end of 2018. RWE also wanted to get lignite out of the ground there and activists in illegal tree houses had tried to prevent the clearing. They built barricades out of wood and rubble, erected meter-high platforms on tree trunks. Activists climbed onto it and chained their hands and necks with special locking mechanisms.

The police in North Rhine-Westphalia have climbing specialists, but clearing a single tree house in the forest sometimes took a whole day. At the time, other activists had dug themselves into caves they had built themselves. There were casualties on both sides; a journalist crashed through a suspension bridge between two tree houses and died.

"Everyone here knows that Scholz hasn't done his homework," says climate activist Luisa Neubauer before the Chancellor's appearance at the World Climate Conference. The federal government must now prove that their "all the nice election promises" really mean something.

Source: WORLD / Christina Lewinsky

The police in Lützerath expect an operation lasting several weeks. For this purpose, forces are requested from all over Germany, accommodation and refreshment points in the vicinity are planned. The officials have to work with RWE's security guards to ensure that the site is completely cleared and that no one can return.

"In the end, Lützerath has to be empty, and that is only possible with an overall operation in which, firstly, the barricades are removed, secondly, the people are moved, thirdly, all the houses are demolished and the trees are cleared, i.e. the occupation infrastructure is eliminated," emphasizes NRW- Interior Minister Reul.

The police not only have to keep an eye on the core area of ​​Lützerath, but also on the surrounding area. The activists want to set up an alternative camp in neighboring Keyenberg, a vigil in Holzweiler and other “pop-up vigils”. In addition, environmental organizations are calling for a large demo on January 14 in Lützerath. It is said that 11,000 participants publicly declared that they wanted to oppose the eviction.

Lützerath has become a symbol of climate protection, but the security authorities assume that there will be less support than for the Hambach Forest. The police have to be prepared for the fact that there are numerous demonstrators standing behind them while they are clearing Lützerath. Experienced officials are familiar with such constellations - but it's a pretty uncomfortable situation.

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