Danish police detained Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg and five others at the University of Copenhagen on Wednesday during a protest against Israel’s war on Gaza.
The 21-year-old activist, who was captured on video being escorted into a police vehicle, was released from custody the same day, according to Reuters , which cited Danish media reports.
The demonstration occurred in the university’s administration building as the Danish student group Students Against the Occupation demanded that the school stop collaborating with Israeli universities.
“While the situation in Palestine worsens, the University of Copenhagen continues its collaboration with Israeli universities and thereby contributes knowledge that is used to commit genocide. Our university must not contribute to genocide,” the group said in a press release.
Thunberg, who is not a student of the university, posted videos on her Instagram account about the demonstration before she was detained.
“Students Against the Occupation and I are at the University of Copenhagen’s administration building,” Thunberg wrote Wednesday morning in an Instagram Story.
“Police have been called, violently entered the building with a ram wearing assault rifles. They are evicting everyone as we speak,” she wrote.
Thunberg added in a separate story post, “Students have been arrested and are being taken to the station this very moment.”
Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, center, participates in a march from the University of Copenhagen to Vor Frue Square in Copenhagen, Denmark, on Sept. 4, 2024.
While Thunberg is known for her climate activism, in recent months she has also been an advocate for Palestinians — even garnering the ire of a spokesperson for the Israeli military who later apologized .
In an opinion piece for The Guardian in December, Thunberg and three fellow members of Fridays for Future Sweden, the climate activism movement Thunberg started, explained their stance.
“Advocating for climate justice fundamentally comes from a place of caring about people and their human rights. That means speaking up when people suffer, are forced to flee their homes or are killed – regardless of the cause,” they wrote.
“Demanding an end to this inexcusable violence is a question of basic humanity, and we call on everyone who can to do so. Silence is complicity. You cannot be neutral in an unfolding genocide,” they continued.
Protests over the war in Gaza have erupted around the world, including in the U.S. , since the longstanding conflict in the region intensified on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas militants launched a surprise attack on Israel, killing more than a thousand people and taking 250 more hostage.
Since then, Israeli forces have killed more than 40,000 Palestinians and injured at least 94,398 others, according to Al Jazeera’s tracker of the conflict .
A United Nations special rapporteur on human rights said earlier this year that there are “reasonable grounds” to believe that Israel’s military offensive in Gaza amounts to genocide.
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