Environmentalists protest Social Democrat party congress

Several dozen environmental activists protested a Social Democrat conference in Teplice on Saturday over the party’s stance on coal mining in the region. The protesters put up a sign on the building where the conference is taking place, while others gathered outside. The environmentalists would like the Social Democrats to reject further coal mining in the area. However, the party says that a regional referendum should determine whether coal mining limits, imposed by the government in the early 1990s, should be lifted. This would lead to the destruction of several villages in the region that are located on large brown coal deposits. During the communist era, dozens of villages and towns in northern Bohemia were destroyed to make way for coal mining.