Activist Greta Thunberg was among six people arrested at Copenhagen University as they protested the institution’s connections to Israel on Wednesday.

Thunberg appeared alongside members of the Students Against the Occupation group, an anti-Israel activist group. Thunberg has become internationally famous for her climate activism, but she has participated in a number of anti-Israel protests across Europe as Israel has prosecuted the war in Gaza.

“Students Against the Occupation and I are at the University of Copenhagen’s administration building,” Thunberg wrote on Instagram. “Police have been called, violently entered the building with a ram wearing assault rifles. They are evicting everyone as we speak.”

“Students have been arrested and are being taken to the station this very moment,” she later added.

GRETA THUNBERG INTERRUPTED AT CLIMATE PROTEST AFTER CHANGING THE TOPIC TO THE ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR

The student group is demanding that Copenhagen University end all of its partnerships and collaborations with Israeli universities and other institutions.

CLIMATE ACTIVIST GRETA THUNBERG GOES ON TRIAL IN LONDON FOR BLOCKING OIL AND GAS CONFERENCE

The group highlighted the Erasmus student exchange program that CU participates in, allowing Israeli students to study in Denmark. The group also condemns the Niels Bohr Institute, the university’s physics department named after the world-famous physicist. Bohr was of Jewish ancestry.

Critics of Thunberg argued that her appearance at the protest was hypocritical, claiming on social media that one of the programs the university has partnered with Israeli groups on is focused on solving climate change. Fox News Digital could not find such a program, but the Niels Bohr Institute does list the “Physics of Ice, Climate and Earth” as a major research topic.

“We analyze the ice samples in our laboratories and study water stable isotopes, greenhouse gas, impurity concentrations, and ice properties,” the institute writes on its website, adding that it seeks to “understand both gradual and abrupt climatic changes of the past, present, and future.”

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has once again engaged in civil disobedience. (AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali)

Copenhagen police said Thunberg was one of a group of roughly 20 protesters who demonstrated inside a university administration building. Five people were arrested in addition to Thunberg, according to Danish media.

Police have confirmed that Thunberg has since been released.

NGO ships rescuing migrants in the Mediterranean Sea do not encourage departures, the European border guard agency Frontex director, Hans Leijtens, told Euronews.

“You have never heard me saying that it’s a pull factor. So that’s what my opinion is”, he said at a doorstep in the European Parliament on Wednesday.

“The first thing for our officers is to save lives on land and at sea. What we can do also depends on resources, but at least we always promise to do it,” Leijtens added.

“I repeat: all Frontex agents have taken an oath promising to serve and protect. This is what we do, priority number one.”

Leijtens’ position starkly contrasts a confidential agency document on migration routes from Libya to Europe, never made public but reported in the press in November 2022.

It has been cited repeatedly by the Italian government in its attempts to criticise the activities of NGOs.

More attention to fundamental rights

Leijtens, director of Frontex since 2023, updated the European Parliament on the agency’s activities.

Several MEPs who spoke at the hearing noted that he seems to devote more attention to respecting the fundamental rights of migrants than his predecessor Fabrice Leggeri, who is now a member of the European Parliament for the far-right Patriots for Europe group.

In the first seven months of 2024, irregular crossings of European borders decreased by 36%, mainly due to a decline in traffic on the Balkan and Central Mediterranean routes.

On the other hand, landings on the Canary Islands more than doubled, and entries from Belarus to the Baltic countries almost tripled. UN refugee agency’s data for 2023 shows that refugees and asylum seekers arrived in Europe in record numbers last year.