“Climate protection is important, but it doesn’t justify crime”

From BZ/dpa

Fines will “not be able to stop this increasing radicalization in this area”.

Union calls for imprisonment

In an application, the Union called for imprisonment for certain forms of climate protest. According to the application, activists who blocked roads or obstructed the passage of police, fire brigade and rescue services are to be punished with a prison sentence of between three months and five years. The Union is also demanding a minimum sentence of imprisonment instead of fines for damaging or destroying cultural assets.

The SPD criticized the Union’s application. “We will not achieve a real strengthening of our law enforcement agencies and courts by increasing penalties,” said Sonja Eichwede, legal policy spokeswoman for the SPD parliamentary group. It has long been scientifically proven that harsher penalties are not a deterrent.

The Greens also rejected the request. “You were looking for an opportunity to distract yourself from your own failure in climate policy by defaming not only the last generation, but the entire climate protection movement,” said Greens parliamentary group leader Irene Mihalic. The Greens politician Lukas Benner described the tightening of penalties demanded by the Union as “disproportionate”.

The background to the debate was, among other things, the death of a cyclist who had been hit and run over by a truck in Berlin last week. According to the fire brigade, a special vehicle that was supposed to help free the injured person under the truck was stuck in a traffic jam on the city highway. This is said to have been triggered by an action by the climate protest group “Last Generation”.