On Monday March 21 at 6am, an incendiary sabotage of cables of the German public railway company Deutsche Bahn occurred near the Berlin-Wuhlheide station. It caused numerous train cancellations and delays on the regional line RE1 to Frankfurt/Oder, on the line to the capital’s airport, and also on long-distance rail traffic (Eurocity from Poland). All traffic was only restored on Tuesday around 4 pm.
This sabotage was claimed against the planned inauguration the next day of the Tesla factory (the largest electric car factory in Europe) in the presence of Elon Musk, the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his Minister of Economy and Climate (from the Green Party), but also against the war in Ukraine with the delivery of Russian oil and coal to Germany via tanker cars, and in solidarity with the opponents of the construction of the Tren Maya in Mexico (a 1,500 km long railroad line that will cross the Yucatán Peninsula), with which this same Deutsche Bahn is associated.
Here is a translation of the long communiqué, published on Kontrapolis on March 21, 2022.
This is more than a declaration of intent
This morning, on the eve of Tesla’s production launch in the Berlin suburb of Grünheide, we sabotaged the RE1 shuttle service to Falkensee with a fire near the Wuhlheide S-Bahn station. According to DB, the fire in two cable ducts disrupted the Airport Express, the RB 2 and other connections. The target of our sabotage was the 3,000 commuters who work in Tesla’s Gigafactory. We tried to interfere with the preparations for the start of operations on March 22, 2022 and the public handover of Tesla vehicles to its customers. This is our contribution to the protection of water and the climate.
Today, the 25th day of the war against Ukraine, we briefly interrupted the transport of rail tank cars filled with Russian oil. The purpose of our action was the dozens of trains with Russian oil and coal circulating to the capital. Each tank car and their financing prolongs the war. Every day, Germany transfers up to one billion euros to Russia for the transfer of energy. This is our contribution to climate protection and the end of the war.
Today, on another day of destruction of the land and the rainforest in Mexico-Yucatán and the threat of the Deutsche Bahn (DB) to the people living there, we have lit a small beacon of solidarity. The aim of this sabotage is to cause economic damage to the largest German public company. With our action we make visible those people who are fighting against the “train of death”. This is our contribution to support the people who fight against the “Tren Maya” and colonialism in order to survive.
With this in mind, this morning, as climate and anti-war militants, we sabotaged the railway line between Karlshorst and Köpenick, near the S-Bahn station Wuhlheide, for the economic lock-down of Tesla and the DB-“Tren Maya”.
Instead of taking responsibility and changing our wasteful and consumerist lifestyle, the economy continues. For the economy, Germany, as one of the largest arms exporters in the world, is over dead bodies. This must end. The same goes for the financing of the Russian regime and other dictatorships like Qatar. The world wars and the destruction of the climate are connected with our way of life in our country. It is also a world war for fossil energy.
Several thousand people from the Ukraine arrive in Berlin every day on the sabotaged line. These are the same rails on which Russian oil flows to the capital every day. Dozens of tankers with 20 to 25 cars each arrive in Berlin, because the transfer of energy allows Germany to finance the war chest of the Russian regime. This economically liberal and profit-oriented policy will not stop the war. If Russian coal, gas and oil are not cut off immediately, Germany is prolonging the war, death and reasons to flee every day. We declare our solidarity with the people who are fleeing from this world: it is the people who count, not the profits. The warlike and environmentally destructive economy can no longer be stopped by words. On our own initiative, we set fire to the signal, communication and high-voltage cables and took over the temporary halt of the tanker delivery. To do this, we opened two cable shafts after removing the plates. The fire department was too late to intervene and the line was successfully sabotaged. We were able to exclude any danger of death or injury.
Our action is also a support and a contribution to the debate of climate militants, who will meet in many cities on March 25 during the “Fridays for Future” events. Blocking well-oiled economic processes is existential for all of our futures. We will be among you and demonstrate with you.
Germany’s largest public company, Deutsche Bahn, is paying today for the Tren Maya death train in Mexico-Yucatán. And Tesla is paying today for its undertaking and theft of water in Brandenburg. This is a world we all live in.
In a message to the Global North, an indigenous person from the Global South summarizes: “We will all feel the impact of destruction, no matter how far away. We have a common home: Mother Earth.” Our “home”, the Earth, is being burned by countless companies like Tesla and Deutsche Bahn.
Deutsche Bahn is involved in a murderous project against the indigenous people of southern Mexico. The Tren Maya train project leads to the destruction of the rainforest and deprives the people of their livelihood. The indigenous people are fighting back.
Tesla is participating in the theft of resources around the world, destroying nature and depriving us of clean water. Electromobility is not a way out of environmental destruction, but its logical continuation. People in the region and across the country are fighting back.
A word to the commuters
The train spits out hundreds of Tesla employees every morning, who are shuttled to the Gigafactory in Falkensee. 3 daily trains per hour with more than 2000 seats to make the trips to Tesla possible. The sabotage of the shuttle to Falkensee disrupts the punctual start of work of the current 3000 Tesla employees. Every executive, every worker and every employee who arrives late or not at all at work today is a grain of sand in the wheels of Tesla’s production. A grain of sand that could even disrupt Tesla’s start-up preparation process and damage Musk’s self-image.
If you’re a commuter and didn’t make it to the capital on time today, that was our intention too. Don’t take it personally. It was an economic loss for us.
When employees, service providers and workers do not do their work because they cannot get to work, economic processes are blocked. This costs the economy money.
Tell your bosses, your department heads, your teachers and professors that you will arrive later or not come at all, because the line has been sabotaged because of Tesla’s Gigafactory, because of Tesla’s regional water theft, because of Brandenburg’s economic policy, because of the government’s climate destruction and energy policy, because of the Russian regime’s war connection and Deutsche Bahn’s murderous involvement in Mexico. The fire affected and disrupted not only the Express but also other connections to Berlin International Airport (BER). There is little or no reason to fly and continue to destroy the climate at the expense of all living beings.
Before we look at these two groups in more detail:
A word to the public, citizen initiatives and eco-activists
Yes, you have the right to oppose. No, you do not have to take into account any consultation. No authorization. No court decision. The resistance must not and will not end with the granting of the concession to Tesla. On the contrary: if the world is turned into a dumping ground, in which it only burns, dries up, is flooded, in which more and more precious life forms disappear – then we must even break the laws and act radically.
Instead of going to vote again and again – because every election is supposedly the really important election. Instead of keeping our mouths shut over and over again.
Instead of arguing with each other over petty details.
Instead of going to the AfD Nazis, who spread their völkisch pestilence.
We see that all this “green” progress that the new government is selling us only leads to further destruction. Under the slogan of “progress”, the planet is plundered while there is still money to be made.
What is happening here in Grünheide has been happening in many countries outside Europe for many decades in a more cruel way. So it is right that people are fleeing here. The rich countries are historically and currently responsible for wars, famines and ecological catastrophes in other regions.
We are on the side of the struggles against Tesla in Brandenburg/Berlin. We recommend that citizens’ initiatives and associations ignore the pressure of the police, the press and politicians and their calls to distance themselves from our action. If you did not participate in our attack, there is no reasonable reason to distance yourself from it either. It is logical that our action cannot be the means of local and well-known citizens’ initiatives or groups such as “Fridays for the Future”. A distancing between “evil and good” divides the opposition to Tesla. Whoever steals our water, steals our land, destroys our environment is our enemy.
We respect the initiative of all Tesla opponents and do not distance ourselves from you either. Please continue
Why Tesla?
– The continuation of the current policy, in the form of a new eco-liberal traffic light [colors of the new ruling Left-Green-Liberal coalition], is doomed to failure. Our sabotage is directed against the “business as usual” of a policy that defends Tesla’s interests by boot licking. Politics, administrations, some courts and some media serve and have always served the interests of the economy. We want to put an end to the “business as usual” of environmentally unfriendly, costly and resource-destructive e-mobility.
– We were told: Covid does not allow a public hearing of objections to the construction of the plant. That is why the so-called National Environmental Board has set up an online forum to silence the protest. The anger of the population and citizen initiatives against Tesla was deliberately channeled, isolated and had to be numerically muzzled. At the same time, “guru” Musk obtained special permission last year to assemble 9,000 people, so that he could unfold his patriarchal delusion and perverse show of commerce in front of 4,000 more followers than the sanitary Covid rules allowed. The consultation had to be repeated at the instigation of the environmental associations. This can be considered a small success. But nothing more, because the result was a foregone conclusion one way or another.
– Although he has no authority to make decisions, Brandenburg’s Minister of Economics, Steinbach, announced that the objections would not pose a major problem. He is mistaken. Opposition to the plundering of water and the destruction of the climate is still in its infancy. We are only talking about the beginning of production, not about future expansion. Today, environmental associations such as the Green League and Nabu [Naturschutzbund Deutschland, an old German NGO] filed a complaint for the first time. They believe that the approval of additional water withdrawal is “illegal”. A political decision by the courts could not be expected. This decision has to be imposed in the long term by climate defenders, local residents and their supporters.
– We’re told: the permitting process for the site is not yet complete. If in doubt, Musk should dismantle the one-square-mile industrial park. Who believed such a thing? The whole region knew that the authorization was decided. The Brandenburg Ministry of Economics, with its behind-the-scenes discussions, was at the head of the sell-off of the country, water and nature. And the so-called environment minister Vogel of the Greens did not set any limits to the plundering of water either. For him it is simply a “discussion of ghosts”. After the approval was granted, Minister President Woidke (SPD) spoke of “climate-neutral production” and a “big step into the future”. An interesting thought when the world is already on the brink of collapse. Tomorrow we will have taken another step forward.
– Musk, the richest man in the world, is establishing a turbo-capitalism in Germany that acts as fuel for the economy. The powerful Volkswagen Group, which employs more than 650,000 people worldwide, wants to “modernize” its own group structure and has taken him as a model. Diess, the head of the VW Group, is fascinated by the rough and tumble way in which Tesla is setting new standards and “revolutionizing our industry”. At an internal meeting of VW managers, the “Leadership Summit,” Diess even had the rival god Tesla speak live during the session. The 200 top managers (mostly men with seven-figure annual salaries) had to agree to the new style, which no longer has to take anything into account. For Tesla, trade unions and good working conditions are only disruptive elements in the turbo-capitalist system. That is why there is now a “yellow” works council. The orientation of the German business world towards this new style is already reason enough to sabotage the Tesla battleship. The Chinese province of Xinjlang shows how far this orientation can lead. The Chinese CP systematically enslaves the Uyghur population in order to exploit them economically in labor and re-education camps. Tesla does not care about human rights. Tesla recently opened a showroom in Urumpi, the provincial capital.
– We claim the right to resist. We are forced to function, that is, to be a predictable cog in the wheel, at work, in the company, in the job. We work ourselves to exhaustion and generally receive little money, let alone a pension. We are not impressed with the behavior of the Tesla Group. The Titanic also seemed unsinkable. With many other regional and inter-regional forces, we can become the iceberg.
– With the Tesla factory, a new taboo has been broken that we do not accept. The citizen consultations were a farce. The unauthorized construction leaves people stunned to this day. The behind-the-scenes discussions of politics and administration and the erasure of the minimum democratic standards, slowly acquired and anyway not very effective, make people angry. If clean water is becoming scarce for us in the region, but Tesla can use it freely, then it is time to actively and painfully stop the politics, the administration, Tesla and the outsourcing companies.
Disrespect for people, the region and nature is the catalyst for a social revolution. Direct action is a legitimate offensive defense against the advance of destruction. Water theft and many other things justify radical resistance.
Blocking well-oiled economic processes is existential for all our futures. Tesla is now raising the stakes. Let’s slow it down again. Every day counts, every hour of successful sabotage of a multinational counts. For revolutionary water protection initiatives. What we can do, anyone can do!
Why Deutsche Bahn-Tren Maya?
– DB Consulting & Engineering is neither environmentally friendly nor good for the climate. Even the 100% state-owned group can no longer do without greenwashing. A quarter of Germany’s railway electricity is supplied by the coal-fired power plant Datteln IV, for example. Despite the abandonment of coal and without judicial approval of the plant, DB has committed itself to buying huge amounts of electricity, which is why Datteln IV was built. It is powered by coal from Colombia, for example, which is mined under appalling working conditions and with gigantic destruction of the environment. The murder of activists and the eviction of inhabitants are of no importance to the railroads, the main thing is that people buy their green image.
– The railroad is and has always been a state infrastructure with a long tradition. In the context of Nazism, it is worth remembering the transport of millions of people, mostly Jews, to the extermination camps. Without this infrastructure, Nazism would not have been able to carry out systematic and industrialized mass murder. In all wars, the railroad transported soldiers to the front – to kill them and as cannon fodder. Even today, the train is logistically irreplaceable for the army. And it transports Russian oil and coal to Berlin, thus supporting the destruction of the climate and the war against the people of Ukraine. The current so-called “humanitarian rail bridge” of the national railroads is diametrically opposed to the daily oil deliveries by rail. The delivery and financing make the German state a brother in arms of Putin.
– Years ago, the railroads transported nuclear waste through the German Republic with a huge police deployment, against the will of the population. The population has consistently opposed the nuclear transports in Gorleben and throughout the country.
Decades of broad-based resistance, ranging from blockades and occupations to radical, non-violent actions against nuclear policy, finally forced the politicians in this country to get out of nuclear power. But at the EU level, this nuclear policy is now declared sustainable and the Greens support this direction. Nuclear reactors under attack, as in the Ukraine at the moment, or Putin’s nuclear armament invite us to outlaw nuclear energy on an international level.
– Recently, the Deutsche Bahn made a pilot test with the Ministry of the Interior at the Berlin-Südkreuz station using facial recognition software to control the population. Digital check-in, online payment without cash, and personalized QR code in tickets should be seen as a technological attack. The pandemic is and has been used to impose surveillance and (self)control. The railroads, as the largest public company, are not only leading this technological attack on their customers, they are also playing a pioneering role.
– The Mexican project is also part of this destructive action: in Yucatán, DB Consulting & Engineering is participating in the development of the “Tren Maya” project. Together with the Spanish groups Renfe and Ineco, the three companies are receiving 13.5 million euros as a shadow operator of the Mexican National Tourism Development Fund. Deutsche Bahn receives about 9 million euros. This is a relatively small amount out of a total cost of some 6 billion euros for the 1,500-kilometer line. Because the railway company has primarily sold its image to the operator FONATUR as a project of progress and green modernization. As a “shadow operator” of a “win-win” situation for all participants, except for those involved locally. Behind all this is an attempt by the Mexican side to hide the true meaning of the project.
– DB Consulting & Engineering is serving as a fig leaf for further militarization in southern Mexico. It is the Mexican military that will reap the benefits if the train of destruction should ever pass through areas where more than one million indigenous Mexicans live. The military’s interests are clear. In many areas, indigenous people have been fighting against a corrupt state and asserting themselves as rebel communities for decades against their impoverishment and elimination by colonization, the military, paramilitaries, hunger and disease. With the train and the new tourist centers planned to serve, the destruction of the protective rainforest and indigenous livelihoods is an intentional goal, not a thoughtless side effect. It is about the social destruction of communities. Once a path has been cut through the life-sustaining rainforest, it is easier to break down resistance. And the desperate migration to Mexico’s southern border can be more easily stopped or controlled militarily.
– In Mexico, indigenous communities have requested a consultation process called Consulta. Either they have not taken place, or it is a farce like the one that has taken place so far in the case of Tesla. If you believe the government and the economy, the Tren Maya is a done deal, just like the Gigafactory in Brandenburg. We don’t think so.
– DB Consulting & Engineering has no qualms. For decades, the state-owned company and its diplomatic staff have been making a mockery of human rights in order to secure lucrative contracts in dictatorships. For DB, Latin America is a strategic developing market. DB Consulting & Engineering also manages or plans large projects in countries such as Brazil, Colombia or even Qatar, China and the United Arab Emirates, where human rights are all considered obstacles to trade. In Mexico, where human rights are known to count for little, critical activists and journalists are shot, and the rate of rape and murder (femicide) of women is particularly high, DB Consulting & Engineering has tried, as a shadow operator, to get a foot in the door to move beyond the current development status. The dead are on the path to success and progress. (The French manufacturer Alstom actually won the contract to build more than 40 trains for this project).
– Our action and the relatively small financial damage caused by our action are a compensation for the 9 million pocketed by the DB for its current activity as a developer. In addition to the passenger traffic, on a daily basis the railway company transports several dozens of trains with oil and coal tanks, building materials and containers of consumer goods within the capital on the line we sabotaged. With just-in-time delivery of goods and production, sabotage has economic significance. The greater the damage to the line, the longer the repair work, the less punctual the goods traffic, the better.
– We cannot bring back to life the militants murdered in Yucatán or Chiapas with this small material damage, but it weighs heavily on DB concerned with its image and economic profitability. Through our action, we protect the militants currently threatened and call for a militant campaign in our country. For every activist murdered in Yucatán, Deutsche Bahn is responsible. Deutsche Bahn is everywhere vulnerable to “ecocide and expulsion” in Mexico.
– Our sabotage is a greeting of international solidarity with the Mexican jungle and an encouragement to resistance in the urban jungle. We stand with you in Yucatán, even though we live in the global north.
Our struggles are linked to yours. Your freedom is also our freedom. Our freedom is also your freedom.
The disrespect for human beings, for indigenous people and for our land is the accelerator of a necessary global social revolution. Direct action is an offensive measure against the progress of destruction.
The blocking of well-oiled economic processes is essential for the future of us all. The destruction of the earth is for us the consequence of a patriarchal ideology which wants to subjugate the earth and which spreads like a trail of devastation through the rain forest, Grünheide and many other places. The railroads can be attacked in many ways. Let’s force them to abandon the Tren Maya project. Let’s give life to the struggles in Yucatán and Brandenburg through sabotage.
Courage to all! What we can do, others can do too.
– Unplug Tesla.
– For revolutionary water protection initiatives.
– Stop the climate-destroying war economy and Nordstream 1.
– Climate protection instead of war!
– Security through global sabotage of war material instead of “security nostalgia” through armament and war!
– Open borders – for everyone and everywhere!
– For radical, international campaigns and struggles.
Climate and anti-war activists for the economic lock-down of Tesla and DB-Tren Maya
Berlin, March 21, 2022
Freedom for Ella (climate activist)
Freedom for Do & Jo (active against Nazis)
Freedom for Lina (anti-fascist)
Freedom for …
Solidarity with the struggles of Lützerath, the “last generation”, Rigaerstr. 94 and Kaderschmiede and with all persecuted antifas in Saxony and elsewhere. Ya Basta!
On Monday March 21 at 6am, an incendiary sabotage of cables of the German public railway company Deutsche Bahn occurred near the Berlin-Wuhlheide station. It caused numerous train cancellations and delays on the regional line RE1 to Frankfurt/Oder, on the line to the capital’s airport, and also on long-distance rail traffic (Eurocity from Poland). All traffic was only restored on Tuesday around 4 pm.