The arrest of the climate activist at the Lützerath site has been widely commented on. The German police explained the conditions of the arrest to CheckNews.
The pictures were widely commented on. Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg was arrested and briefly detained on Tuesday along with other activists during a protest in front of the country’s largest open-pit lignite mine in the west of the country. The next expansion of the site was to result in the destruction of a hamlet called Lützerath.
Photos of the arrest circulated on social media and showed Thunberg being held by officers and then lifted during the evacuation. But a video has also circulated of the activist being photographed next to motionless police officers, giving the impression of a pose session for the press. We see the young woman making fun of the situation. This sequence was widely commented on by its critics and presented as evidence of the “staged” “fake arrest”.
The police department that coordinated the on-site operation confirmed to CheckNews that the arrest was very real and that the police officers present in the photos and video are actually real police officers. As for the relaxed atmosphere of the arrest that allowed the photographers to capture the footage, the same source is pleased, citing police concerns about letting the press do their job: “The context in which the photo was taken is following freedom of the press! We are pleased that our colleagues have shown such professionalism during the police operation on site.”
Our interlocutor states that “during the intervention, very isolated criticism was voiced that press work had been hindered, and that is why there are now discussions [sur le fait qu’on ait laissé prendre des photos] ? This shows how difficult it is to please everyone. It was important to us as the police to enable media reporting and to ensure the protection of journalists in critical situations. What was done – so that the journalists could do their work and take pictures”.
And to tell us[qu’]At the scene, the police waited with Greta Thunberg for the bus that took the group away.” The police would not have posed for long just to comfort the photographers and would therefore have simply been on standby.
“Greta Thunberg’s group was arrested while her identity was being verified. After all the data was available, the group was transported out of the danger zone by bus and was able to move freely,” the German police specified, referring to a procedure that lasted “a few hours”. “With regard to the various demonstrators present on the site, each individual case is examined by RWE Power AG (operator of the site) and a criminal complaint is filed. The group that stopped at the edge of the pit [dont est extrait le lignite] will not be prosecuted. The group that crossed [les barrières de sécurité délimitant l’accès au site d’exploitation] will be prosecuted. Greta Thunberg belongs to the first group, which is why no criminal charges were brought against her.
This Thursday, Greta Thunberg is in Davos, Switzerland, to debate with the Director General of the International Energy Agency along with Helena Gualinga from Ecuador, Vanessa Nakate from Uganda and Luisa Neubauer from Germany.