There was a strong anti-capitalist mood among the 100,000 people who demonstrated outside the Copenhagen climate summit on 12 December.
Police brutality against activists: "They put handcuffs on us and forced us to sit on the cold ground for six hours"
But almost 1,000 of the demonstrators were cornered off and forced to sit on the cold ground for six hours. Among them were 40 members of the CWI.
Officially, according to the Danish police, these were "preventative arrests". "We were innocent", says Mattias Bernhardsson, a CWI city councillor in Haninge, Sweden, who was one of the people arrested.
Despite winter temperatures climate activists walked from Copenhagen’s inner city to the ’Bella Centre’, six kilometres away, where the heads of governments from around the globe met.
Many demonstrators believed these politicians were not willing to take the scale of action needed to save the environment, as this would involve challenging the profit driven production of the car, oil, energy and other capitalist giants. According to media reports, the talks at the official conference were stagnating.
On Saturday demonstrations took place all around the world. In Australia 50,000 demonstrated. In Hong Kong, Manila and Berlin further protests were organised.
More demonstrations were planned for Sunday in Copenhagen.
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