Environmental activists splattered the pillars and walls of Finland's Parliament House with a red substance on Wednesday morning.
The climate groups Elokapina from Finland and Sweden's Restore Wetlands claimed responsibility for the act, according to a press release issued by the groups.
The protesters carried out the act "to draw attention to the climate-disastrous peat mines in Sweden run by the Finnish state-owned company Neova", according to the groups.
They said that the paint used in the protest was water-soluble.
Ten activists carried out the act to "demand political action" in ending the practice of peat extraction, the groups said.
"[The] peat industry is one of the environmentally harmful industries that the Finnish state open-handedly supports through subsidies. We cannot stress enough how dangerous it is to continue making unsustainable production profitable, yet this is exactly what our government is now doing, with our tax money," Elokapina member Valpuri Nykänen said in the release.
"By shedding light on the state-owned Neova's peat mining in Sweden, we shed light on the horrible fact that our state has its hands deep in accelerating the crisis estimated to kill billions in this century alone. This cannot go on. That is why we act, and act in visually striking way that cannot be left unnoticed," Nykänen's statement continued.
Helsinki police said that a dozen people were detained at the scene, after officers responded to a call about the incident at around 8 am.
Elokapina is the Finnish branch of the UK-based environmental group Extinction Rebellion. Members and supporters of the group carried out several protests over the summer, including one joined by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, in which thousands of people participated.
In 2022, the majority state-owned energy firm Neova announced plans to resume energy peat production in Finland, following a decline in wood imports from Russia.
At the time, a reduction in the use of peat had occurred much sooner than expected.
The development followed after the government in 2020 set a target of halving peat use within a decade as part of its climate strategy, a move it said was needed because burning peat for electricity emits more carbon dioxide than coal.
According to Statistics Finland, the country saw a combined 10 percent decrease in the consumption of fossil fuels and peat in 2023.
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