The Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg among other protesters were detained by Norway police being removed on Monday morning from a demonstration in Oslo, were they blocked the finance ministry. The protest was organised against against wind turbines farms built on Sami Indigenous land in central Norway. The protesters, the Sámi people, the only recognized Indigenous group within the European Unio, sustain that their centuries-old tradition of reindeer herding is jeopardized by the windfarms which became operational in 2019 and 2020 and their infrastructure. Some of them chanted “let the mountains live.”
They ask the wind turbines to be removed and the reindeer grazing lands restored. Norway’s top court ruled in 2021 that the wind farms violated Sami herders’ cultural rights. “So far, the government has not even acknowledged the Supreme Court’s ruling on the violation of human rights or offered an apology to the Reindeer Sámi,” Eirik Larsen, Political Advisor to the Sámi Parliament in Norway, declared to media. In fact, this is about how to implement climate policies without obstructing Indigenous rights and the environment.The term of „green colonization” was used criticizing the situation in Norway. „That it is not climate justice,” Thunberg said. The protesters were released and returned in front of the government building a few hours later. Norway’s energy minister on Wednesday canceled a trip to the U.K. because of the protest. A new governmental decision on the wind farms was anticipated. The U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, José Francisco Calí Tzay urged the U.N. body to “consider communicating with the Norwegian authorities. The Sami people number between 50,000 and 100,000, according to the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs. About 65,000 of them are located in Norway.
