TELL THE TRUTH

The siege of the Berta Cáceres started started shortly after noon when police in high-vis jackets surrounded the bright pink boat in Oxford Circus, central London, with two cordons and then steadily peeled off the Extinction Rebellion activists stuck to it.

Officers with angle grinders cut through the bars below the hull of the vessel, named after the murdered Honduran environmental activist, which protesters had chained and glued themselves to. Five hours later, however, the tables had turned as hundreds of activist reinforcements swarmed into side roads and blocked the end of Regent Street.

As officers attached the Berta Cáceres to a lorry, the crowd chanted: “We have more boats.” 
 

The pink boat has been captured, and almost 700 people have been arrested, but the Extinction Rebellion protests in London have entered their sixth day.

The environmentalist group kick-started its flamboyant direct actions on Monday, blocking vehicle traffic in Marble Arch and Waterloo Bridge, holding a non-stop demonstration in Parliament Square, and occupying Oxford Circus with the aforementioned pink boat (reinvented as an improvised DJ-set-cum-pulpit). The boat, named after murdered Honduran environmentalist Berta Cáceres, was eventually towed away by the police on Friday evening.

Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old founder of the school strikes for action against climate change, has said she hopes to join the Extinction Rebellion protests when she visits London next week.