Greta Thunberg charged with disobeying police during Sweden protest, to appear in court at end of July

Climate activist Greta Thunberg has been charged with disobeying law enforcement during a recent protest in Sweden.

Thunberg, 20, and other activists were detained in Malmo on June 19 when they stopped traffic for oil trucks at a harbor, according to local newspaper Sydsvenskan.

Swedish prosecutors said in a statement on Wednesday that a “young woman” was charged because she “refused to comply with police orders to leave the scene” during the protest.

“The climate crisis is already a matter of life and death for countless people. We choose to not be bystanders, and instead physically stop the fossil fuel infrastructure. We are reclaiming the future,” Thunberg wrote in an Instagram post at the time.

The Sydsvenskan newspaper said Thunberg will be called to trial at the end of July. The outlet reported the charge is typically punishable with fines, but could lead to a six-month sentence.

Thunberg rose to prominence in 2018 when she started staging weekly “School Strike for the Climate” protests outside the Swedish Parliament while demanding more be done to fight climate change.

In 2019, she famously made a fiery speech to the United Nations in which she chided world leaders for their inaction.

“You have come to us young people for hope,” she said. “How dare you. You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.”

“If you choose to fail us, we will never forgive you. We will not let you get away with this,” she added.

Thunberg has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize multiple times and in 2019 was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year.

The charges against Thunberg come in the wake of studies finding that rain is replacing snow and leading to excessive flooding, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is reaching its highest level in human history and bodies of water around the world are shrinking, among other things.

With News Wire Services