They block freeway entrances, stick themselves to streets and splash works of art with soup: climate protection demonstrators have been heating up tempers with such actions for weeks. Now some of them are in prison – under great protest.
Munich (dpa / lby) – According to the police, around 700 people demonstrated loudly in Munich on Sunday for the release of around a dozen climate activists. In the afternoon, the participants in the action moved from Wettersteinplatz to the Stadelheim prison, about two kilometers away, where they believe climate protectors are wrongly imprisoned. The organizer spoke of 800 to 1000 demonstrators.
“They work to protect our livelihoods and are arbitrarily locked away for it. Meanwhile, the state and corporations continue to destroy our planet without any punishment,” said one of the spokesman for the organizational alliance, Hagen Pfaff, in advance. The alliance of around 40 groups called for the abolition of preventive custody.
In the past few weeks, the Bavarian police have taken 33 climate activists into long-term custody. As of Friday, 17 of them were still not at large. A judge ordered these people to be taken into custody until November 14 or December 2, i.e. for a total of 8 or 30 days. This was announced by the Ministry of the Interior in Munich to the German Press Agency. The other victims were released after four to seven days, one person the following day.
The state government had the option to take climate activists into custody for a month as a preventive measure, most recently defended as an act of a well-fortified democracy. “Preventive measures are necessary to prevent crimes that are announced that are obviously imminent,” said Head of State Florian Herrmann (CSU). The same applies if there is an obvious risk of repetition. And the rule of law is making use of the opportunities offered by the Bavarian Police Tasks Act: “A well-fortified democracy simply cannot be danced around on its own.”
Several lawsuits are still pending before the Bavarian Constitutional Court, which are also directed against preventive detention.
Prime Minister and CSU boss Markus Söder had recently sharply criticized the protests. “There is always a danger that with a large movement, a small core will start to become more aggressive and radical,” he told the newspapers of the Funke media group (Sunday) when asked whether the term “climate -RAF” is also his choice of words. “Alexander Dobrindt pointed out a phenomenon and warned what could develop from it. The vast majority of Germans believe that road blockades are wrong.”
Dobrindt had recently demanded that the emergence of a “climate RAF” must be prevented. Dobrindt used the expression to refer to the Red Army Faction (RAF), which for decades was the epitome of terror and murder in the Federal Republic. More than 30 people fell victim to left-wing terrorists between the 1970s and the early 1990s.
In Munich, as in other cities in Germany, there have recently been repeated road blockades by climate protection activists, most of whom had stuck their hands to the roadway.
The Jesuit Father Jörg Alt, who repeatedly took part in the climate protest, told the editorial network Germany (RND/Sonntag): “I admire these people immensely for their courage and selflessness. They did it right because these road blockades the car in to set the path, the symbol for our fossil Next-so.” Among other things, Alt is a pastor at the Catholic university community in Nuremberg.
