By IMOGEN GARFINKEL
Greta Thunberg has been banned from Venice after she and Extinction Rebellion activists dumped green dye in the Grand Canal.
The 22-year-old climate campaigner was issued with a €150 (£130) fine and a 48-hour restriction on entering the northeastern Italian city after multiple protests over the weekend.
Protestors from Extinction Rebellion targeted 10 sites around Italy to coincide with the end of the Cop30 United Nations climate conference in Belém, Brazil, where countries failed to agree on phasing out fossil fuels.
Thunberg attended the group’s Venice demonstration, where activists dumped an environmentally harmless dye into the city’s largest channel, turning it green.
A banner that read ‘Stop Ecocide’ was hung up at the Rialto Bridge across the Grand Canal.
The campaigners also staged a flash-mob protest in which activists, dressed in red with veils concealing their faces, walked slowly through groups of tourists.
Luca Zaia, the governor of Veneto, condemned the stunt as ‘a disrespectful gesture for our city, its history, and its fragility’.
‘I am even more surprised to see Greta Thunberg among the authors of this useless protest, who clearly aim – more than raising awareness about the environment – to give visibility to themselves,’ he added.
Extinction Rebellion activists also targetted rivers, canals and fountains in other Italian cities including Bologna, Genoa, Milan, Padua, Palermo, Parma, Trieste, Turin and Taranto, to raise awareness about the ‘massive effects of climate collapse’.
The organisation accused Italy of being one of the countries that went to the greatest lengths to prevent the most ambitious proposals put forward at the Cop30 talks from going through.
