Video: Police Forcibly Remove Greta Thunberg After She Refuses to Comply
Editor’s Note: Our readers responded strongly to this story when it originally ran; we’re reposting it here in case you missed it.
For the second time in two days, Swedish law enforcement intervened on March 13, forcibly removing Greta Thunberg and nearly 40 other environmental activists who were blocking the entrance to the Riksdag Swedish parliament building in Stockholm.
Thunberg and the other activists accused leaders of political inaction regarding perceived climate issues. After being tolerated on March 11, the protesters started getting arrested March 12, and again March 13.
After being dragged away from the building, they were driven away in a police van.
“The struggle has only just begun,” Thunberg told reporters, according to Reuters. “The climate justice movement have been doing these things for decades and we have been met with only deaf ears. We feel like we have no other choice but to sit here and disrupt the system in order to get our voices heard.”
Two police officers lifted Greta Thunberg and dragged her some 20 meters from the door she had been obstructing at the Swedish parliament before putting her down on the ground https://t.co/PHlMuYB07A pic.twitter.com/AyDLVwFFMq
— Reuters (@Reuters) March 12, 2024
Signs reading, “CLIMATE JUSTICE NOW” and “CLIMATE JUSTICE = SOCIAL JUSTICE” were sprawled in front of the main entrances to the Riksdag.
According to the U.K. Independent, Swedish lawmakers were forced to use other entrances as the protesters blocked the main entrances.
Thunberg, 21, made waves in August 2018 when she skipped school to protest for more action against climate change.
This is not the first time Thunberg has been removed by police.
In June of 2023, she was charged by Swedish prosecutors for refusing police orders to leave the area during a planned blockade of the road to Malmö harbor, where oil tankers dock.
In October, she was arrested in London during an oil summit protest against the fossil fuel industry, which was branded “the Oscars of oil”
National Geographic Kids did a feature on Thunberg, listing several facts about her:
Thunberg has Asperger’s syndrome.
When she was 11 years old, she became so upset about climate change that she temporarily stopped speaking.
And in August 2019, Greta took a two-week voyage on a wind and solar-powered boat from Plymouth, England, to New York, to attend a climate conference. She refused to fly due to jet planes’ high carbon footprint.
On Sept. 23, 2019, Thunberg famously delivered her “How dare you?” speech at the United Nations summit, accusing them of having “stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.”
In November 2023, Thunberg declared her anti-Semitism when she appeared with a crowd in a video chanting, “crush Zionism.”
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