The Swedish climate activist
Greta Thunberg was arrested
this Saturday by the Netherlands police during a protest on a highway in an access section to The Hague against fossil fuel subsidies.
The Police forcibly removed Thunberg after
she refused to leave the road voluntarily
, and two officers who grabbed her by the arms put her on a bus where they placed other arrested people, while those who remained sitting on the road chanted at the activist. Swedish "You are not alone" in English, as seen in the videos broadcast by the Dutch press.
Thunberg was later released, said Rozermarijn van't Einde, spokesperson for the environmental group Extinction Rebellion (XR). Last October, the 21-year-old activist had also been arrested during a protest against the oil industry in London, in which protesters blocked access to a hotel that housed executives in the sector.
More than
400 protesters were arrested
, according to the armed forces, in the environmental protest that tried to block, without success, access to The Hague.
Greta Thunberg is taken away by the Police at a demonstration in the Netherlands. Photo EFE/EPA/Ramon Van Flymen
Thunberg earlier joined several hundred protesters who walked from the center of The Hague to a field next to the A12 motorway leading out of the city. Dozens of police officers, some of them on horseback, prevented the group from accessing the highway.
Carrying XR flags and banners reading "Stop Fuel Subsidies!" and "The planet is dying!", the protesters maintained a tense confrontation with the Police, who formed a human wall.
Some protesters found another route and blocked another road near the highway, which connects the coastal city of The Hague with the central city of Utrecht.
"It is important to demonstrate today because we live in a state of planetary emergency," Thunberg told AFP before her first arrest. And he added: "We must do everything possible to avoid that crisis and save lives." Then she, contacted by phone, declared to the Dutch press agency ANP that her arrest had occurred "calmly."
Shortly after,
Thunberg and other activists returned to the demonstration site and were arrested again
, this time for blocking traffic at an intersection. No charges have yet been brought against the protesters, said Vincent Veenman, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office.
Thunberg became world famous in 2018 when, as a high school student, she decided to protest in front of the Swedish Parliament every Friday to demand action to tackle the climate crisis, in an action that thousands of young people from around the world followed months later and It served to boost the global 'Fridays for Future' movement.
The Swedish Justice twice last year sentenced Thunberg to pay fines for public disorder in climate protests she attended.
On February 2, a British judge withdrew charges against Thunberg and other environmentalists for public disorder during a demonstration against fossil fuels in London in which they were arrested, considering that the police then applied "illegal" conditions when making the arrests.
“Hold on Greta Thunberg”: Grabois' message of support
In a publication on
“Hold on Greta Thunberg; my solidarity. "He who thinks that the environmental fight is "progressive" and thus disqualifies it, did not understand anything: neither Perón, nor the Pope, nor Science, nor reality," wrote the former presidential candidate on that social network.
The post earned Grabois some messages of support for his position and many others of disapproval.
With information from EFE and AFP
IS