Another protest against the railway project in Stuttgart

Stuttgart - About two thousand people gathered this evening in Stuttgart, southern Germany, for a demonstration against the construction of a new railway hub. According to the organizers of the protests, the AP agency reported this. Already on Thursday, about two thousand people protested against the related tree felling in the nearby park. According to today's information from the police, which had around a thousand men in the field, the unrest resulted in 130 injuries.
    "Shame on you!" shouted the demonstrators today, who expressed their anger with a concert of whistles and vuvuzelas after police interventions from the previous day and night, reported the AFP agency.
    While the organizers expected around 70,000 protesters today, spokesperson for the protesters Carola Eckstein estimated, according to AP, that only slightly more than two thousand people had gathered near Stuttgart station. The police estimated the attendance at several hundred.
    On the branches of trees in the Castle Park near the planned underground station, demonstrators hung allegorical hearts and sunflowers. About 300 trees here, including centuries-old ones, are set to fall victim to the giant railway project, against which an increasing number of people are protesting.
    Police reported today that previous demonstrations resulted in 130 injuries, of which 16 were hospitalized. Six police officers were also injured. Twenty-six individuals aged 15 to 68 were detained.
    The spokesperson for the protesters spoke of up to 400 injured. Most of these injuries were reportedly eye irritations after police used tear gas and defensive spray against the demonstrators. The police also admitted today that protesters threw chestnuts at the officers, whereas on Thursday they mainly spoke of cobblestones and plastic bottles.
    Chancellor Angela Merkel called for calm, whose Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has been advocating for the project. "I wish that such demonstrations were held peacefully. We must continue to strive for this and avoid everything that could lead to violence," she told regional radio SWR. According to the chancellor, people have the right to peaceful protests. Through her spokesman Steffen Seibert, however, she also conveyed that the project was democratically approved and must continue.
    Since midnight, permission to fell trees in Castle Park, where the modernized station is to expand, has come into effect, and felling actually began at 01:00. The core group of demonstrators accompanied the felling with protest whistles and slogans from loudspeakers.
    In the morning, the police rejected complaints from demonstrators that while they protested peacefully, the police dispersed them with "violent excesses" using tear gas and baton attacks. The head of the police union Rainer Wendt defended the intervention as "not only justified but completely appropriate."
    The Minister of Transport of Baden-Württemberg, Tanja Gönner, criticized the behavior of the demonstrators. "It is concerning if construction sites for future projects must be protected in such a manner," she said in a Deutschlandfunk radio interview. She pointed out that school youth attacked a police car, emphasizing that demonstrators often deliberately "shoved children forward."
    Stuttgart is set to become one of Germany's most significant railway intersections and one of the important stops on the European railway corridor from Paris to Budapest. In addition to the negative impact of the construction on the environment, opponents also dislike the high costs of the project, which is expected to consume seven billion euros (approximately 173 billion crowns) over nine years.