Source: AFP
More than a thousand environmentalists demonstrated outside Tesla’s factory near Berlin on Saturday, police said, a day after some of them tried to force their way into the factory.
The protesters, accompanied by a large police force, unfurled anti-Tesla and anti-capitalist banners surrounded by a heavy police presence. Organizers of the demonstration put their numbers at around 2,000.
While there were clashes between some of the protesters and police at the start of Saturday’s demonstration, the situation quickly calmed down, an AFP reporter noted.
Activists are fighting plans to expand the plant in Gruenheide, which opened in 2022 after an arduous two-year approval and construction process with administrative and legal hurdles.
They are made up of a collective of campaigning organisations, including Extinction Rebellion and more local groups, and the latest round of protests has been underway since Wednesday.
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On Friday, police said they pushed back several groups of activists who tried to enter the factory. There were injuries on both sides, a police spokesman said, without giving details.
Source: AFP
Protests against the plant have grown since February, and in March the plant was forced to halt production after a suspected arson attack on nearby power lines by a far-left group.
A week later, Tesla boss Elon Musk visited the site to offer his support to staff and denounce what he said was the work of “eco-terrorists”.
Tesla wants to expand the site by 170 hectares (420 acres) and boost production to up to one million vehicles a year to feed Europe’s growing demand for electric cars and counter rivals moving away from combustion engine vehicles .
The factory already occupies about 300 hectares, employing about 12,000 people. It produces the Model Y SUV, Tesla’s flagship model for the European market.
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But the Gruenheide site southeast of the German capital is close to a protected forest and there are concerns about water use.
“People living here are losing their livelihoods because they no longer have drinking water,” said Katja Kuehn, a 49-year-old activist. “Water quality is getting worse.”
“Globally, we also know that we don’t need more electric cars,” he said, adding that what was needed was a completely different way of thinking about mobility.
Local residents voted 60 percent against the project in a non-binding vote in February.
Source: AFP