For weeks, climate activists have been drumming for a protest camp in Hamburg, the groups are planning civil disobedience actions around the "System Change Camp" (9 to 15 August 2022), but also workshops and lectures. Around 4,000 to 6,000 participants are expected, and a large demo is to move from the Landungsbrücken to the city center on August 10th. The police speak of the “biggest operation since the G20”. Police forces from other federal states are also requested.
It is a colorful mixture of groups, including groups such as "Ende Gelände", which the Office for the Protection of the Constitution describes as being infiltrated by extremists, as well as radical left-wing groups such as the "Interventionalist Left Hamburg". According to the Hamburg police, extremists are "not formative" for the meeting, Fridays for Future and the Green Youth also take part.
The protest camp is directed against the construction of new terminals for liquefied natural gas (LNG) and against fossil energy supply. In the days before there was now a violent legal tug of war - also about the question of what legal protection the infrastructure around a meeting enjoys.
The climate protesters had chosen the fairgrounds in the Hamburg city park as the meeting place and were planning to set up two larger and two smaller circus tents, 40 supply and event tents, sleeping tents, field kitchens and fresh water and waste water infrastructure. The assembly authority, which is based at the police, prohibited this and referred the organizers to a replacement area in the Altonaer Volkspark, a wasteland.
The green and recreational areas in the city park would be severely damaged by the seven-day use - this is how the authority justified the relocation. The authority also banned sleeping tents and other infrastructure. The administrative court partially overruled this decision in an urgent procedure.
According to the court, the climate camp is “with a high degree of probability” to be classified as an assembly protected by Article 8 of the Basic Law and the Assembly Act. This includes the infrastructural facilities of the climate camp, because there is a connection to the content of the statement of opinion intended by the camp. The relocation of the meeting from the fairgrounds in the city park to the area at the Altonaer Volkspark, on the other hand, was "not objectionable". The formation of opinions can also take place there. The city has now appealed the court decision. So far there has been no decision on this.
The case is reminiscent of the debates surrounding the G-20 summit five years ago. At that time, the police had forbidden meetings on the Entenwerder peninsula. This was unlawful, the administrative court ruled five years later in May 2022.
