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This week, 17 people were arrested after a slow-moving protest march on one of Stockholm’s busiest streets. Police interventions against climate action increased, as did penalties for acts of civil disobedience. At the same time, far-right environments are beginning to polarize climate activists. Follow the worker with increasing caution during the wetland restoration work week.

In line with the mounting climate crisis, resistance has also been stepped up. Highways, ports and airports are increasingly being blocked by climate activists who demand urgent action to reduce emissions and who want those in power around the world to act. At the same time, repression against those who carry out these actions is increasing. Both from the extreme right and from the authorities.

– We have seen a sharp tightening of the penalty for civil disobedience. This is not the least noticeable in the changed classifications of crimes. Acts previously classified as disobedience to law and order are now viewed as disruptive and can result in at least six months in prison.

So says Pia Björstrand, attorney and spokeswoman for Klimataktion. She has advocated for many climate activists. One of them has just been sentenced to prison after sticking himself to the runway of Vakcho Airport.

Wetland restoration is controversial

A group that has received a lot of attention in recent years is the Restore Wetlands organization. Their methods have been questioned by many, but at the same time the message banning peat drilling reached and created a great deal of debate.

The organization uses nonviolent resistance through civil disobedience when, among other things, it impedes traffic through so-called “slow walking”, the slow walking of protest, on densely packed roads.

– The situation is urgent. We live in a system that is leading us towards the mass destruction of ecosystems on the entire planet, which threatens to bring down our entire civilization, so I am actually amazed that more people are not acting, says Pia Björstrand.

Traffic blockades can lead to discomfort, which in itself can be counterproductive for the environmental movement, she adds.

– But civil disobedience has historically been the key to change on many key and crucial political issues. Given that we are in a climate emergency, it is no wonder that people are trying everything they can to change the system.

Slow walking for climate

Early morning in Stockholm at the end of April. The spring sun warms slowly and a little outside the city, nervous truckers hope to get through before the worst of rush hour traffic hits. Construction workers and buses are overcrowded. He chased people on their way to work. Suddenly everything stopped.

Someone impatiently drums on the steering wheel and looks annoyed around the clock. Anger spills over into the growing queues. Money must come. Inflation and skyrocketing food prices, among other things, have meant that more and more people are finding it difficult to make ends meet, and for the vast majority of them, the delay equals a deduction from their paycheck.

honking cars And profanity is heard through neural windows. A few hundred meters away, yellow reflective vests light up the three-lane road. Brace the wetlands, they say on the front sign that’s up and soon you’ll hear the first police sirens. However, a cyclist who skips a fixed queue gives a thumbs up. “Keep fighting.”

Activists are slowly progressing. Some were arrested on the spot and taken to a nearby police station. After a moment, everything goes as usual. Another work that has become a common sight on the Stockholm street scene in recent years, it has divided the capital’s residents into two camps.

A demonstration must be disruptive in order to have an impact.

So says Helen Walgren, co-founder of Restore Wetlands who still participates in most of the organization’s many demonstrations.

17 arrested

She is supported by Tina Kronberg, a former pre-school teacher from Malmö who quit her job to devote all her time to climate activism. As we speak, 17 of her mates from Restore Wetlands are still being held following Monday’s events in Stockholm. On another occasion, journalists have been arrested and their equipment confiscated since they reported a similar incident at the end of August last summer. Something that has been heavily criticized by Reporters Without Borders, among others.

– It’s absolutely unimaginable, you sigh.

– I just want to scream, I’m so angry. People who demonstrate, using their constitutionally protected right, are arrested for vandalism. It is as if the legal system is trying to scare people into silence while we live in an acute and escalating climate crisis.

Tina Kronberg talks about her activism. How, in the record-breaking hot summer of 2018, you began to understand that something wasn’t right. Sweden’s forests are on fire at the same time that more and more international research reports are pointing to the same thing. The situation is urgent.

– I went to a meeting with Extinction Rebellion and it was really just when I started to understand this thing about social movements and civil disobedience, it was something new to me. Since the beginning in 2022, it has been involved in wetland restoration. We dare you to do whatever it takes.

harsher climate

Even Tina Kronberg notes the harsher climate. The police are getting more and more involved and raising the tone against the activists. Not least on social media, where far-right groups post the names and photos of activists who took part in the traffic stop. All this with the aim of intimidation and preventing continued participation.

During one of the weekend’s gatherings in Kungsträdgården, far-right media profiler Kristian Petersson appeared with his camera. Near him, activists who gathered before the day’s roadblocks are watching. On the far-right alternative news site Exakt24 and others like it, climate activists have been hanged.

When Christian Peterson discovers that the operator is also there to report, he lights up and quickly approaches with both a cellphone and a movie camera. Only an hour or so later, as a reporter, I was exposed to a not-so-flattering image that quickly spread through several far-right Twitter accounts as well as Instagram and Telegram.

In the post, nothing is about the actual weather phenomena we are there to monitor. Instead, it’s kind of a huge conspiratorial jumbo-talk about my wife changing her last name because, according to Christian Peterson, she doesn’t want to be associated with me.

Then follows, and I have to give them a point, many comments about my questionable status and not-so-hot looks. In any case.

Tina Kronberg He sighs again.

– That’s why I don’t use social media much. But she explains that it’s very evident when they’re here and they’re after us.

The so-called alt-right, with everything from fascists to outright Nazis but also plenty of moderates, has repeatedly criticized measures that have brought traffic to a standstill across the capital. With the help of angry pitches on social media in an increasingly high-pitched tone, they hope to win the sympathy of frustrated motorists.

Moderates want to see mandatory detention

In April last year, the moderates, for example, announced they wanted to see tougher legislation against climate activists, including mandatory detention for those blocking roads.

– Of course I can understand that people who are stuck in a traffic jam can get angry. But we also live in a time when climate catastrophe is here and now. Millions of people are being forced to flee their homes due to climate change, says Tina Kronberg, and then you have to do what it takes to change.

Don’t you ever feel fear when you step on a busy highway?

– At first I didn’t want to join, I was really scared and even wrote a letter of resignation because I thought I would be beaten. Now I feel calmer when I sit in the middle of the road proud of what we are achieving despite the growing oppression against us.