A protest against lithium mining in Serbia will be held today in Berlin in front of the Futurium building, where, as the organizers of the protest said earlier, the congress of the German Association of Industrialists under the motto “Environmentally friendly industrial development” will take place.
Numerous citizens from Serbia and other countries of the former Yugoslavia and the wider region will use this opportunity, with the support of German activists, to point out the contradictions in the statements of representatives of German industry – who are advocating for an ecologically sustainable way of production on home soil, and at the same time, for the exploitation of lithium with all the consequences it brings abroad, in this case in Serbia.
A proclamation containing clear messages for the authorities in Germany will also be read at the protest. We publish the proclamation in its entirety.
We, Berliners from Serbia…
Oppose the environmental destruction in Serbia that is imminent if the international mining company Rio Tinto, in co-operation with the Serbian government, goes ahead with its planned lithium mining. It is not only the environment that is at risk, but above all the livelihoods of the farmers affected, as well as the water supply for entire regions and the capital Belgrade.
Despite massive resistance from those affected and the majority of the Serbian population, a region traditionally used for agriculture is to be turned into a lithium mining area in order to satisfy the demand for lithium batteries from Western industry, particularly the German car industry.
In line with the motto ‘whatever the cost’, the government is prepared to use any means to secure the profits of the German automotive industry and to label this industry with a ‘green industrial policy’.
Here we can see what this means: behind a green label, tangible profit interests are hiding at the expense of the environment of a small and impoverished European country.
All this is happening in unanimous co-operation between a federal government supposedly committed to environmental protection and the autocratic Serbian President Alexander Vucic, whose apparatus reacts to criticism and resistance with repression.
We, Berliners from Serbia, are protesting in the strongest possible terms against this profit-orientated, anti-environmental and undemocratic alliance between German and European industrial capital and the autocratic regime under Alexander Vucic in Serbia.
Down with Rio Tinto. Down with profit. Long live the environment!
M.M.
