Together with a dozen other activists from Extinction Rebellion, MDG’s parliamentary candidate Trygve Tømmerås carried out a climate demonstration in central Oslo today.
Around 18.00, the activists parked a large truck in the middle of the intersection Hausmanns gate / Torggata. About ten people chained to each other and to the truck, and had to be cut out of metal pipes to be released. Even more lay on the asphalt and chained to each other.
After first giving several verbal orders to the protesters to leave the place, the police went into action at 7.30 pm when none of the protesters complied with the order. A total of 58 people were brought in by the police, the Oslo police inform Dagbladet.
As recently as 23 o’clock, the police were still freeing the protesters from the chains and devices they had used to attach themselves to each other and the truck.
Here, MDG-Trygve is taken by the police
MDG politicians taken by the police
One of the protesters who was brought in by the police was MDG politician Trygve Tømmerås. He is the second parliamentary candidate in Telemark, and made it clear to Dagbladet in advance that he had a plan to be arrested.
Despite Tømmerås’ meeting with the law’s long arm, the MDGs will not centrally take action against the Telemark politician.
This is what the party leader Rasmus Hansson makes clear to Dagbladet. Hansson, former parliamentary candidate for MDG, and now second candidate for MDG in Oslo, comments on the matter on behalf of the party.
MDG-Trygve’s hidden arrest plan
– Tømmerås behaved completely according to the book, and we believe that posterity will have greater respect for Tømmerås than for Erna Solberg’s and other politicians’ evasion of climate policy, Hansson says.
– Is this how a parliamentary candidate for MDG should behave?
– It’s his personal choice. As a party, we neither condemn nor support civil disobedience. But I believe that civil disobedience is a tool in the democratic toolbox, which can be used in particularly important cases. Then it makes extra great demands on the people who use it, but this is a democratic safety valve, Hansson answers.
He adds:
– Civil disobedience is a deeply personal thing, which places great demands on non-violence and personal responsibility. Our candidate has taken that responsibility.