Swedish activist Greta Thunberg on Saturday criticized the leaders of the German Green party, a coalition partner in the German government, for their support for the demolition of the village of Lutzerath in the west of the country for the extraction of coal from the subsoil.
Thunberg has demanded that companies such as energy company RWE, which owns the land, be held accountable for the way they treat people. «The fact that the Greens are engaging with these companies shows what their priorities are,» he added.
These statements have clashed diametrically with one of the party’s top representatives, Economy Minister Robert Habeck, who this past Friday lamented that the environmental activists who had occupied the village because of their opposition to the use of this area for coal mining are fighting a «misguided battle.»
Thunberg, on the other hand, believes that «the coal in the ground here will not bring prices down immediately, and anyone who thinks that way is out of touch with reality». The activist took the opportunity to lament the general state of the town, which is dotted with craters in the lignite mining area of the Rhineland.
«It really does look like Mordor,» she said, referring to the wasteland described in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books. «It shows what people are capable of in the wrong conditions. It shows what we’re fighting against, what we want to avoid,» he added.
For the time being, the eviction of the activists, who are now perched in trees and barricaded in a nearby tunnel, continues this Saturday.
The police, however, has stressed that it has no jurisdiction over this last case, since the eviction of the tunnel is being treated officially as «a rescue» and is carried out by RWE and members of the Technische Hilfswerk (THW), a volunteer organization that works in cases of civil defense and is integrated into the Ministry of the Interior.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
