Successful protests for immediate coal phase out in Hamburg, Dortmund, Lünen, Salzgitter, Flensburg and Bremen + Alliance “deCOALonize Europe” demands import stop of hard coal + Various actions on 4. and 5.10. joined the resistance in mining regions

05.10.2019. Activists of the alliance deCOALonize Europe protested yesterday and today with various decentralized actions for an immediate coal phase out. With the decentralised actions they showed at which places in the global supply chain the trade and consumption of the climate-damaging coal must be stopped. Today, 200 people demonstrated in Bremen against the colonial continuity of coal imports. Previously, the small group “Kohle kapern” already had occupied mooring cranes and a coal bunker of the Flensburg municipal utility.. These burn hard coal from Russia. The blockade continues at the current time. Since Friday afternoon, activists occupied rails for flat steel production in Salzgitter until the early hours of the morning and blocked the transport of hard coal.

On Friday, around 200 people in Hamburg blocked the waterway to the Moorburg power plant and campaigned for the immediate closure of Germany’s largest coal seaport. In NRW, activists interfered with the operation of the Trianel power plant Lünen by occupying a crane and a coal atomisation plant. At the same time, kayak activists on the power plant’s access canal demanded Germany to stop importing hard coal from Colombia, Russia and the USA. Bicycle demonstrations also took place in Hamburg and Dortmund.

“The Shor peaple and residents of Kuzbass asked me to make their demands known with the actions of deCOALonize Europe: They also have a right to live and call on Germany and Europe to stop burning coal,” says Tjan Zaotschnaja, Russian activist of deCOALonize Europe.

“The climate package is a disaster for climate protection but even fatal for people in the coal-mining regions. According to the German government, Germany should continue to import hard coal until 2038. It is our responsibility to join the courageous resistance in the mining regions and demand an immediate exit from coal. With our actions we are campaigning against the capitalist system, which is at the expense of human beings and nature,” says Lina Ottner, who is active in Bremen.

deCOALonize Europe is an alliance of groups from the climate justice movement, Latin America and Russia solidarity groups and initiatives against coal from Germany, the Netherlands and Great Britain. In this book „Still Burning -Vom Kampf gegen die Steinkohleindustrie“ the alliance informs about coal burning in Germany and the resistance in the mining regions.