A student climate strike activist was detained by police this Friday during a demonstration taking place outside the public ministry of Oeiras, in solidarity with the activists detained on Thursday for blocking the entrance to the Council of Ministers.
The young woman’s arrest occurred after protesters left the area where they had been allowed to remain and attempted to block the street, prompting police on the scene to install bars to restrict the movement of protesters on the sidewalk. public ministry building.
Some of the protesters attempted to leave the demonstration perimeter and move to the sidewalk on the other side of the street, resulting in police using physical force to force them to retreat. The arrested protester was on the sidewalk filming a video for Student Climate Strike social media and resisted police attempts to force her back outside the demonstration perimeter, so one of the officers handcuffed her and detained the young woman.
The youth present added to their chants the phrase “Police, beating, police, court, more than two degrees of heat is not scary.”
Around 11:30, some of the activists present in court began to disperse, with one of them, Leonor Chico, explaining to Lusa that the judge in charge had decided to postpone the hearing so that each of the 16 activists could be heard separately later, supposedly “so that there would be no televisions.” .
Protesters have been in front of the prosecutor’s office since about 10 a.m., when activists arrested on Thursday and being heard by a judge today began arriving.
Then the PSP detained 16 activists who blocked access to the Council of Ministers for disobedience, and identified three more young people for participating in the protest.
One of the representatives and activists of the Student Climate Strike told Lusa that “the withdrawal of the Council [de Ministros] was particularly aggressive, especially towards some minors.”
“They sawed off the metal pipes in our hands, dragged us, put us on the ground and behaved especially aggressively, especially in areas where there were no cameras,” explained Matilda Ventura, adding that they were held at the police station for nine hours. .
The activist assured that young people will not stop protesting and added that “the goal is not to give peace to the government,” adding that new protests are planned from November 13.
“Until our government declares that this is the last gas winter in Portugal, that is, the last winter in which we use fossil gas to produce electricity, because we are currently in the midst of a climate crisis,” he stressed.
The activist says the government is “absolutely failing” and has no plan to tackle the climate crisis.
Matilda Ventura emphasized that this generation was “born into the climate crisis,” and every day there are disasters that are “getting worse.”
“We have a very clear deadline: until 2030 we must remain below 1.5 degrees in temperature, and 2030 for some of us, for the minors who were with us, is not the end of the degree. So this is a struggle that is very tangible for us,” he explained.
He recalled that they require 100% renewable electricity available to all households by 2025, as a way to ensure the end of fossil fuel use by 2030.
He also said they would ensure that the government did not ignore them and were prepared to “halt government and institutional processes” until the government complied with the demands.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
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