EVICTION CONTINUES, OAKTOWN REOCCUPIED, COAL-TRAIN BLOCKED

As expected, the massive eviction of the occupations inside the 12,000 years old Hambach Forest continued today.

Less than a week since the tragic accident, and the resulting death of our dear comrade,
and despite the interior-minister of NRW Herbert Reul (CDU) promising “calm days”, the police has been constantly present ever since, and continued their violent destruction of the climate-justice protest-camps inside the occupied forest.

With the attack on Tick-town and the Kleingartenverein, the police-operation has now reached every single occupation inside the forest. Although some areas have been “successfully” evicted, the activists inside the forest are staying strong and resistant !

At the Kleingartenverein, police was greeted welcome by sitting blockades and tripods on the ground, and in the traverses and tree-houses.
The two tripods – which had been erected in the night between Sunday and Monday – were occupied by all in all 4 people.
Inside Jelka, the largest treehouse in the Kleingartenverein, a group of 5 people locked-on together, in solidarity with the imprisoned comrades, Winter and Jazzy, who were arrested in connection with a tripod-eviction last week. After several hours, and a frustrating amount of work for the cops, all but one tree-house inside the Kleingartenverein got evicted, “Rentner*innenglück” still standing strong.

Early in the morning, numerous police-officers arrived with a digger at the Punkpod by Lorien, where for days the police has tried to evict the tripod. After having successfully evicted it yesterday, it was reoccupied, and then violently re-evicted, by frustrated cops. Here in the western-most occupation, the tree-house “Dir” got evicted and destroyed. Thanks to a large amount of supporters and activists on the ground, the police did not manage to evict further tree-houses in Lorien.

While police has been staying busy in the areas still occupied, activists managed to enter Oaktown and climb up in the trees, reclaiming the otherwise evicted village from their hammocks, and bringing life back into this part of the forest. In Cosy-town people also successfully reoccupied the tree-house Bambule. We are everywhere !

In response to the violent eviction inside the forest, activists on the outside (“Hambis In Exile”) blocked the Hambachbahn railroad, which transports coal from the mine to the power-plants. With several concrete under the tracks, the activists stopped the trains for around 8 hours, successfully binding a large amount of police special forces, and shutting down critical infrastructure of the machinery of energy-giant RWE.

The perseverance of the climate justice activists makes it clear : the movement for the preservation of the Hambach forest, and against the extraction of lignite-coal, will continue struggling ! You can evict our treehouses, but you can not evict our movement !

Hambach Forest stays, today and forever !