Eviction of treehouse village on Hambacher Forst protest site

Ker­pen, 28.​03.​2014. Short­ly after 20:00 on last wednes­day the 28th of march the last of sev­en activists was evict­ed from a tree.

Ker­pen, 28.​03.​2014. Short­ly after 20:00 on last wednes­day the 28th of march the last of sev­en activists was evict­ed from a tree. The tree­hous­es were com­plete­ly destroyed and lots of tree were cut down dur­ing the 16-hour large scale oper­a­tion. While the police is still prais­ing them­selfes, the activists already plan the reoc­cu­pa­tion of the for­est.

Accord­ing to a press release of the police the claim of the evic­tion was made by the town of Ker­pen. The spokesper­son of the town declared build­ing reg­u­la­tions and the “dan­ger­ous” con­di­tions of the hous­es as rea­son for the police oper­a­tion. “The inter­ests of ener­gy com­pa­nies are con­stant­ly pre­sent­ed in the name of dif­fer­ent com­mit­tees or as pub­lic inter­est. At fed­er­al lev­el this mean sub­ven­tions for the most cli­mate-dam­ag­ing form of ener­gy; at region­al lev­el it means the local author­i­ties and the police make up rea­sons to clear the way for RWE. We do not expe­ri­ence this for the first time.” says An­ni­ka Schle­reth after the evic­tion.

Already while the evec­tion was still run­ning peo­ple from Bonn and Vien­na declared their soli­adri­ty through dif­fer­ent actions. Also today man­i­fes­ta­tions for sol­i­dar­i­ty will take place in Mün­ster, Essen and Frankfurt/Main. “Repres­sion can make peo­ple with­draw or weak­en a move­ment. But if we stand unit­ed then it will strenghen us and our resis­tance. Fol­low­ing the evic­tion in novem­ber 2012 a lot of peo­ple declared their sol­i­dar­i­ty and took action over month for the for­est and against RWE. The crim­i­nal­iza­tion of our legit­i­mate protest will not stop our fight.” con­tin­ues Anni­ka Schlereth.

For this rea­son we call for a reoc­cup­tion of the Ham­bach For­est on 26.​04.​2014 By then var­i­ous groups and indi­vid­u­als will be pre­pared to per­ma­nent­ly reoc­cu­py the for­est and to send a strong sig­nal to RWE. “We will not stand by and watch how forests, farm­land and vil­lages will be destroyed for the sake of min­ing. We will not sit back and do noth­ing while the cli­mate is killed by the burn­ing of coal. We will orga­nize, resist and be solid­ly unit­ed with all the peo­ple world­wide that fight against destruc­tion of their space!”