BERLIN, Sept. 5 (Xinhua) -- Several hundred security officers have been deployed to the Hambach forest in Western Germany on Wednesday in order to prevent violent clashes between the energy company RWE and environmental activists who have occupied parts of the area.
A police spokesperson told the press that its objective was to protect RWE workers in clearing obstacles and "obvious trash", as well as to collect evidence on the construction of illegal fortifications. The Hambach forest in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia forms part of the property owned by RWE which comprises Europe's largest open-pit brown coal mine.
RWE plans to cut down 100 out of a remaining 200 hectares of forest shortly at a still unspecified date from October 2018 onwards in order for the site to be used for mining operations. However, environmental activists have vehemently resisted the development which has already received governmental approval. Some individuals have camped out in around 60 treehouses in the forest for years in a bid to prevent it from being felled.
Writing on Twitter on Wednesday, police emphasized that they had not come to clear out protestors from their forest dwellings. The security authorities appealed to campers to "remain peaceful" and "follow the orders of police officers."
According to police, attempts to enter the Hambach forest on previous occasions were impeded by makeshift barricades and booby-traps built by the environmental activists. Herbert Reul (CDU), the regional interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia has recently described the group as being comprised of "extremely violent left-wing extremists" who had traveled to Hambach forest from across Germany and Europe.
"These self-declared environmental activists do not want to save trees, but rather seek to abolish the state", Reul warned. The CDU politician argued that Essen-based RWE had the right to fell the forest as its lawful proprietor.
"We don't know exactly when it will be, but when the day comes the police will have to ensure that this right can be enforced", Reul said.
The activists themselves rejected this characterization of their protest. Speaking to the German press agency (dpa), Emil Freytag of the "Operation Undergrowth" complained that police were purposefully trying to "criminalize and defame" the entire movement. Freytag noted that security authorities had already defined the Hambach Forest as a "dangerous location" in order to enable officers to conduct identity checks of individuals whenever they saw fit.
Aside from the members of "Operation Undergrowth" based locally at the site, several German environmental organizations have urged Berlin to impose a moratorium on the felling of forests for coal power generation throughout the ongoing work of a federal commission on Germany's national exit from the technology. Prior to the commencement of mining activities, the 12,000-year-old Hambach Forest stretched across an area of 4,100 hectares.
Speaking to Xinhua on Wednesday, Jan Peter Cirkel, a press spokesperson for RWE, stressed that the company had a legal obligation under Germany's federal forest law to clear the area "regularly of material alien to the forest." Cirkel added that it had "not yet been determined" when exactly the felling would begin.
