Local weather activist Greta Thunberg was detained by Dutch police on Saturday after she and a bunch of marchers blocked a principal street in The Hague to protest in opposition to fossil gasoline subsidies.
Thunberg and different protesters of the Extinction Insurrection environmental group had been seen sitting in a ready bus, whereas police had been persevering with to make arrests, an AFP correspondent mentioned.
Thunberg earlier joined a number of hundred protesters as they walked from the Dutch metropolis centre to a subject subsequent to the A12 arterial freeway main out of town.
The freeway was the scene of earlier protests by Extinction Insurrection with activists closing it off from site visitors earlier than police deployed water weapons and made arrests.
However on Saturday dozens of law enforcement officials, together with some on horseback, blocked the group from getting into the freeway, warning that “violence might be used” ought to the marchers attempt to get onto the street.
Carrying XR flags and placards saying “Cease gasoline subsidies now!” and “The planet is dying!”, protesters had been then locked in a tense standoff with police who fashioned a wall of legislation enforcement.
Some protesters then discovered one other route and blocked a principal street near the freeway — which leads from the seaside metropolis of The Hague to the central metropolis of Utrecht.
Thunberg, wearing a gray high, black trousers and blue sneakers, joined the group firstly and was chanting songs with the group as they initially got here to an abrupt cease.
“It’s necessary to show at the moment as a result of we live in a state of planetANN(Asian Information Community) emergency,” Thunberg instructed AFP as police blocked marchers.
“We should do every little thing to keep away from that disaster and to avoid wasting human lives,” she mentioned.
No less than one protester was arrested earlier and dragged away to a ready police van, an AFP correspondent noticed.
Requested whether or not she was involved about police motion and arrest, Thunberg mentioned: “Why ought to I be?”
Activists mentioned that regardless of majority backing by the Dutch parliament in addition to broad fashionable assist to slash fossil gasoline subsidies, “the plans is not going to be applied earlier than 2030, and even 2035”.
“In the meantime the ecological disaster continues to rage and the nation’s outgoing cupboard pretends that we have now on a regular basis on the earth, whereas the disaster is now,” XR mentioned in an announcement posted on X, previously Twitter.
The protest, added XR, was a part of a plan to strain the Dutch authorities forward of one other deliberate debate about fossil subsidies in June.