Swedish climate action update

Cli­mate activists in deten­tion after try­ing to break into air­port

On Fri­day, groups of activists con­nect­ed to Kli­max, Sweden’s direct action move­ment against the root caus­es of cli­mate change, struck against the country’s domes­tic avi­a­tion indus­try. At Malmö Air­port, sev­en activists were appre­hend­ed when try­ing to brake into the run­way, some of them dressed as polar bears. They were trans­ferred to a deten­tion cen­tre in anoth­er city in south­ern Swe­den and kept in soli­tary con­fine­ment for more than 60 hours. The sev­en activists were inter­ro­gat­ed through­out the days, charged with “intent to sab­o­tage air traf­fic” and threat­ened with four years in prison if con­vict­ed.

– It’s total­ly absurd to place peo­ple in soli­tary con­fine­ment for more than two days when they’ve done noth­ing but attempt­ing to cross a fence, in a peace­ful, sym­bol­ic action. The activists did what every­one should do: they tried to stop cli­mate change from accel­er­at­ing. With their heavy-hand­ed repres­sion, the police are try­ing to deter us from fur­ther direct action, but we vow to step up our strug­gle. Since the police suc­ceed­ed in nab­bing the activists in Malmö this time, we will have to be more cre­ative when plan­ning our next actions, says Sho­ra Esmail­ian, media spokesper­son for Kli­max.

Also on Fri­day, scores of activists entered the ter­mi­nals at Brom­ma Air­port in Stock­holm and Land­vet­ter Air­port out­side of Gothen­burg. Many were dressed as polar bears and pen­guins. The demon­stra­tions were fol­lowed by die-ins in front of queu­ing pas­sen­gers. In Upp­sala, a city north of Stock­holm, yet anoth­er Kli­max group staged a protest against a planned local air­port. Pic­tures from the actions can be found at this web­site.

On Sat­ur­day, activists in Stock­holm broke into a police sta­tion to demand the imme­di­ate release of their com­rades in Malmö, and a sol­i­dar­i­ty man­i­fes­ta­tion was held in Gothen­burg. All in all, more than a hun­dred activists were involved in the coor­di­nat­ed activ­i­ties over the week­end.

On late Sun­day, the last remain­ing Malmö-activist was released from the deten­tion cen­tre. All sev­en activists will face tri­al, as will anoth­er group of activists who suc­cess­ful­ly seized the run­way at Brom­ma Air­port in April last year.

Kli­max is a rapid­ly grow­ing move­ment in Swe­den. In Stock­holm, the group has focused on an upcom­ing deci­sion to extend the premis­es of Brom­ma Air­port to the year 2038, allow­ing it to increase traf­fic with at least 20 per­cent. The con­tract, due for final approval in March, will be impos­si­ble to abro­gate if politi­cians elect­ed in Stock­holm in the com­ing decades wish to do so: it can only be annulled by the nation­al gov­ern­ment. This is con­sid­ered deeply unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic by Kli­max, but even worse, Brom­ma Air­port is now poised to con­tin­ue pro­pelling domes­tic flights to Gothen­burg, Malmö and oth­er des­ti­na­tions well cov­ered by rail­way con­nec­tions, thus increas­ing unnec­es­sary car­bon emis­sions at a time when they have to be slashed. Already at this date, the avi­a­tion indus­try accounts for at least 10 per­cent of Sweden’s car­bon emis­sions, accord­ing to esti­mates from the Roy­al Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, and the share is grow­ing. Kli­max is deter­mined to fight this whol­ly irra­tional devel­op­ment until Sweden’s domes­tic avi­a­tion is abol­ished in its entire­ty, as a first nec­es­sary step to a fos­sil-free soci­ety