This policeman risks his job now. If it was in another country, I would laugh it off. Here in Germany this will become a national case.
Could you tell me how you would have done it? To hold those protesters with a limited amount of policemen?
In this scenario the senior officers in charge should've known this would never work and ordered their men to stand down.
I'm not sure that makes sense either. The level of harm isn't nearly the same -- mines are notoriously life-threatening places. The degree of economic harm isn't nearly the same either.
I can see where you're coming from, but surely you can see how many might consider use of force justified, here.
By not holding them. The right to protest outranks the right to property.
And where is that defined? Your rights don't allow you to deprive someone else of their rights.
So probably by hitting a bit they were trying to achieve fear so that people would not go further? No idea, for me what they did is not violent. At least that’s not how I define abuse of power, but maybe because I come from a country where policemen really do abuse power.