Activist Greta Thunberg arrested in Germany at coal mine protest

Swedish activist Greta Thunberg was arrested on Tuesday (17) during protests over the climate emergency in Lützerath, a small town in western Germany. Other demonstrators accompanying her were also taken away by the police.

Greta was protesting against the expansion of a coal mine at the site, which has already seen other clashes between protesters and the police. She was taken by three police officers and held by the arm, after sitting around the mine, and then escorted to a police car.

Lützerath, in the province of North Rhine-Westphalia, began to come to the attention of environmentalists about two years ago, after rumors emerged that the site would be destroyed to allow exploitation of lignite, a lower form of the fossil mineral called “brown coal” in German.

In October, the government announced that the area had been sold to RWE, the country’s largest energy company. The state justification was that it needed fossil fuel to compensate for the lack of Russian gas in the midst of the energy crisis caused by the War in Ukraine.