Mass protest against open-cast mining planned for German border

Campaigners against planned coal mines on the German/Polish border will be making their presence felt this weekend when they orchestrate a massive international demonstration.

Greenpeace together with partner organizations and local associations are inviting people to join in creating an 8km-long Human Chain Against Coal.

According to campaigners, more than 6,000 people in the border region could lose their homes and livelihoods to new open-cast mines as energy companies such as Swedish Vattenfall and the Polish energy group PGE aim to dig up lignite which lies beneath their villages.

The participants of Saturday’s anti-coal human chain will link the two villages across two countries endangered by planned open-cast lignite mines. From Kerkwitz Church in Germany, across the Neisse river, to the school of Grabice in Poland, they will stand hand-in-hand to show opposition to the planned coal mines and solidarity to the local opponents to the planned mines.

Meri Pukarinen, Climate and Energy Unit Head at Greenpeace Poland, commented: “If proposed lignite plans become true, this landscape would turn into the biggest dirty and dusty hole in Europe. This Human Chain clearly shows the growing anti-coal movement, not only in Germany and Poland, but in the whole of Europe. We expect people there from at least 14 European countries who want to declare, ‘The age of the coal is over and the era of renewables is here!’”

Picture credit: © Gunold Brunbauer | Dreamstime.com