On Saturday, police clashed with climate activists who were blocking a bridge in the northern German city of Hamburg to demand more climate justice.
According to the statements issued by the police, the demonstrators participating in the siege of the bridge attacked policemen with pepper spray, and the security forces responded by using pepper spray, batons and water cannons to break the siege.
For her part, a spokeswoman for the protesters described what happened as “a new height of violence and police abuse toward our climate protests.”
The city witnessed several similar demonstrations, today, as activists closed, earlier, the “Kolbrandbruecke” bridge, which is the most famous bridge in Hamburg and the second longest bridge in Germany.
“We are closing here a central hub of German foreign trade in order to point out the consequences of modern colonialism,” Extinction Rebellion said in a statement.
A police spokesman had said that the protesters were a small group of people sitting in the road, some of whom had handcuffed to a bathtub they had brought with them.
An hour earlier, several hundred protesters had blocked a Port Authority railway in the Hausbruch area, and police statements said that these people had climbed up a ramp during the protest procession and sat in the track of the railway.
An organization declared that this step would paralyze “the only railway to and from container terminals in the port of Hamburg”.
In recent days hundreds of people had gathered in Hamburg for a protest camp to draw attention to the consequences of climate change. Today, five groups were notified of the organization of protest processions in Hamburg.
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