"We Can't Pretend We Don't Know": At the Rheinmetall Blockade
Last week, activists tried to block the opening of a new Rheinmetall factory in Wedding which they accused of supplying weapons to Israel. Greta Thunberg was there. So were we.
On Monday morning at 8am, around 40 activists gathered in front of the Wedding offices of Rheinmetall, Germany’s largest weapon manufacturer. Blocking the entrance, many of them glued their hands to the concrete. Others tried to position themselves in front of the doors, but were held back by police officers. One by one, they were each eventually detained.
One of the activists in attendance is a recognisable figure in the world of standing up for humanitarian causes: 23-year-old Greta Thunberg, who was first known for her climate protests as a teenager and has since showed up for pro-Palestinian demonstrations around the world. Thunberg had travelled to Berlin to take part a weeks’ worth of actions organised by the group Peacefully Against Genocide, which held workshops and civil disobedience training centred on disrupting arms production — specifically, opposition to the planned opening of a new Rheinmetall weapons factory in the German capital.
“Being silent and becoming bystanders is not acceptable anymore,” she told HEIST. “We all know what’s going on, we can’t pretend we don’t know that there is a genocide, and we must use our privilege to call out the complicity of our governments.