Greta Thunberg has been arrested at a protest outside of a Central London hotel where oil executives are meeting to demand they remove their money from national politics. She was among hundreds of protestors outside the hotel where the Energy Intelligence Forum is taking place today (Tuesday, October 17).
In a video shared on X, Great is shown being made to go inside a police van where she is searched as officers ask the crowd to "move back". She is thanked by many other protestors as one onlooker shouts "welcome to the UK Greta".
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Many arrests have been made as the protestors disrupted the conference at the InterContinental Hotel where the CEOs are meeting. The protest was organised by Fossil Free London group and the aim was to block access to the hotel on Park Lane by standing and sitting on the pavement to the entrance.
The Metropolitan Police told PA that five people were arrested on suspicion of obstructing a highway and taken into custody.
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Great Thunberg said before her arrest: "The world is drowning in fossil fuels. Our hopes and dreams and lives are being washed away by a flood of greenwashing and lies.
“It has been clear for decades that the fossil fuel industries were well aware of the consequences of their business models, and yet, they have done nothing. The opposite – they have actively delayed, distracted and denied the causes of the climate crisis and spread doubts about their own engagement in it.
“We cannot let this continue. The elite of the oil and money conference, they have no intention of transition.
"Their plan is to continue this destructive search of profits. That is why we have to take direct action to stop this and to kick oil money out of politics.
“We have no other option but to put our bodies outside this conference and to physically disrupt. And we have to do that every time, we have to continue showing them that they are not going to get away with this.”
Hamilton Place has been blocked at both ends by protestors with banners and pink umbrellas with eyes painted on and are shouting "oily money out" and "cancel the conference". Yellow and pink smoke flares have also been let off.
On the arrests, a Met Police statement said: “At 7.18am we responded to reports of a protest outside a hotel in Park Lane. Five people have been arrested on suspicion of obstructing a highway and taken into custody.
“Officers remain in the area.”
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