About 6,000 demonstrators - including Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg - marched on Saturday January 14 to the village of Lützerath in western Germany, according to police estimates, to protest against the extension of an open pit coal mine.

Under an agreement between the government and energy group RWE, law enforcement began evacuating the former slated village this week, whose buildings have been occupied for two years by opponents of the expansion of a mining site.

Few activists were still settled in the area on Saturday, but thousands of people gathered to challenge this project, which in their eyes symbolizes the failure of the Berlin government in the fight against climate change.

Addressing the crowd perched on a podium, Greta Thunberg denounced a "betrayal for present and future generations".

"Germany is one of the biggest polluters in the world and must be held to account," she said.

Climate strike week 230. We are currently in Lützerath, a German village threatened to be demolished for an expansion of a coal mine.

People have been resisting for years.

Join us here at 12 or a local protest tomorrow to demand that #LützerathBleibt!#ClimateStrike pic.twitter.com/hGrCK6ZQew

— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) January 13, 2023

As they approached the village, the demonstrators were met by a barrage of police in riot gear, some of whom used batons to repel the protesters.

Regional police said on Twitter that they had to use force to prevent the crowd from crossing barriers and approaching a dangerous area near the excavation site.

Questioned Saturday at the microphone of the radio Deutschlandfunk, the Minister-President of the Land of North Rhine-Westphalia, the Christian Democrat Hendrik Wüst, declared that the energy policy was "not always clean" but that coal was more than ever needed to alleviate the energy crisis in Germany.

With Reuters

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