If you are on the side of good, everything is allowed: This is the view taken by climate activists when, contrary to the evidence in court, they are not willing to admit that they have committed crimes.
Law and order apply to everyone in a democratic state and are not undermined by someone committing an act in the fight for a better society.
It is good to engage, debate, stand up for your opinion and take part in peaceful demonstrations to make demands stronger.
In this way, climate change has been pushed high up the political agenda.
However, protest finds its limits where it drifts into what is criminally relevant.
Anyone who coerces, attacks, injures or damages their property must expect to feel the consequences.
A matter of course in a constitutional state.
He has all the tools he needs to defend himself.
This includes courts that examine police actions and the charges of prosecutors.
There is not always a conviction at the end, that too is part of the law.
But when magistrates order a person to be remanded in custody for not saying who they are and where they live, that is not “prison” and not a politically motivated judiciary designed to quell opposition.
But the decision of independent judges after weighing up all available facts.
Such speeches and the sometimes openly displayed rejection of democracy, as the activist called “Ella” did at the Gießen district court, are cause for concern.
When the verdict was announced, the presiding judge was unable to justify his verdict because "Ella's" supporters made it impossible with shouts, stomping and drumming against the plexiglass pane.
In his few sentences, he had previously spoken of the defendant claiming a legal vacuum: "This is totalitarian behavior.
An attack on the rule of law.”
The security authorities should keep a watchful eye on those who reject the state and its laws.
Especially when there is a propensity for violence.
This is not true of most climate activists.
But even a handful of people who take advantage of a movement can do a lot of damage.