Five members of Letzte Generation, of Germany equivalent to Just Stop Oil, were charged with “constitution of a criminal organization”, a move that civil rights campaigners say could effectively criminalize future support for a climate campaign.

Mirjam Herrmann, 27, Henning Jeschke, 22, Edmund Schulz, 60, Lukas Popp, 25, and Jakob Beyer, 30, were charged under Article 129 of the German Criminal Code. It is believed to be the first time the law has been applied to a non-violent protest group.

According to prosecutors in the state of Brandenburg, the charges relate to more than a dozen “attacks” against oil refineries, Berlin-Brandenburg Airport and the Barberini Museum in Potsdam between April 2022 and May 2023.

The incidents include protests in which supporters of the group tried to shut down oil pumping stations leading to the refinery, blocked airport runways and threw mash at a Monet oil painting.

Prosecutors said the charges related to a subgroup of the Letzte Generation, a campaign across Germany that has led to thousands of arrests over the past two years.

“There is sufficient suspicion that the five defendants conspired with other members of this sub-group to commit crimes together over a long period of time,” they said. “The union of men was not only meant to last for a longer period of time, but also served to pursue a general common interest.”

Activists say all their protests have been open, responsible and non-violent and have questioned the use of such a draconian law against them.

“It is the first time in German history that a climate protest group using measures of peaceful civil disobedience has been charged as a criminal organization,” Herrmann said.

“This charge is particularly dangerous to democracy and the right to peaceful protest because the charge turns the constitutional right to protest, freedom of speech and political assembly into a crime simply because some laws were broken during a citizen protest.

“This category is reserved for the mafia and organized crime. This charge criminalizes any act of support for the Letzte Generation group. This creates a huge scary fallout for all the climate protests in Germany.”

The charges, brought by the prosecutor’s office in the town of Neuruppin, come after a two-year investigation into Letzte Generation’s activities, which included dawn raids on supporters’ homes, tapping their phones and even seizing the organization’s website.

According to Amnesty International Germany, a guilty verdict for even one of the defendants could turn Letzte Generation into a banned organization by criminalizing any activity that promotes it or its aims, whether financially, logistically, politically, legally or in relation to the media information.

“With the indictment, the criminalization of climate protest in Germany reaches a new level of escalation,” said Paula Zimmermann, expert on freedom of expression and freedom of assembly at Amnesty International Germany.

“We are very concerned about this development and call on the criminal justice system to respect freedom of expression and assembly in its decisions.”

Prosecutors in Munich and Flensburg are conducting similar investigations into members of the Letzte generation, Der Spiegel newspaper reported.