Agencies
Berlin
Members of the Last Generation climate activism group daubed orange paint onto the façade of the German chancellery on Saturday morning.
A photo published by the group shows the phrase "Help! Your children” written in large letters, and numerous handprints. Several activists can be seen sitting or lying down on the ground in front of the wall.
Berlin police are investigating the incident, and detained 16 people between the ages of 13 and 16 to check their identities.
The police opened an investigation on suspicion of damage to property.
The activists are calling on the German government to live up to its responsibility towards the younger generation in terms of climate change, a Last Generation press release said.
Last Generation has repeatedly made headlines with dramatic protests calling attention to climate change, with some activists arrested for disrupting traffic and other measures.
The group has been demonstrating for more climate action with street blockades and other measures since the beginning of 2022.
They have also daubed the Brandenburg Gate with orange paint in the past. Several investigations and trials are under way of members of the group, many of whom have already been convicted.
The Last Generation group frequently blocked roads in Berlin and other cities over the past two years, its best-known but far from its only tactic in a campaign of protests that also included spraying the capital’s Brandenburg Gate with orange paint, among other things.
The group’s tactics were widely criticized, and Chancellor Olaf Scholz described them as "completely nutty.”
In January, Last Generation asserted that the number of demonstrators has increased enormously in the past two years and said that "from now on we will protest in a different form — but it will remain unignorable.”
From March onward, "instead of dividing into small groups and blocking roads, we will hold disobedient gatherings with many people. And where we cannot be ignored,” the group said in a statement.
As well as that, the group said it will increasingly "directly confront” those it considers responsible for climate destruction, for instance by confronting politicians and other decision-makers in public and on camera.
It will also "increasingly visit places of fossil destruction for our protest,” it added, pointing to past protests at airports, oil pipelines and an energy company.