Thunberg apologizes for 'against the wall' comment

Teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg, who was named Time magazine's Person of the Year last week, was forced to apologize on the weekend for appearing to call for the execution of world leaders.

During a speech in Turin, Italy on Friday, the 16-year-old Thunberg said that leaders should be "put against the wall" but, after a backlash from people who were outraged by the comment, insisted on Saturday that she had not meant anyone should be shot.

She said the phrase, which in English is used to describe execution by firing squad, has a different meaning in Thunberg's first language, Swedish.

"That's what happens when you improvise speeches in a second language," she said on Saturday.

Thunberg had made the initial comment during a speech at a Fridays For Future protest she attended after being at the COP25 United Nations climate summit in Madrid, Spain.

The BBC reported that she told the crowd in Turin that governments did not seem to be moving quickly enough to tackle warming and said: "World leaders are still trying to run away from their responsibilities, but we have to make sure they cannot do that. We will make sure that we put them against the wall, and they will have to do their job to protect our futures."

She later tweeted that she was not calling for violence.

"Yesterday, I said we must hold our leaders accountable and unfortunately said 'put them against the wall'," she wrote. "That's Swenglish: 'att stalla nagon mot vaggen' (to put someone against the wall) means to hold someone accountable. Of course, I apologize if anyone misunderstood this."

She said Swedes take the phrase to mean putting someone on the spot with tough questions.

Several right-wing media outlets criticized Thunberg before she issued her clarification. The far-right online publication Breitbart said she had gone "full Fidel Castro", the Independent newspaper noted.

Thunberg said in her tweet: "I cannot enough express the fact that I — as well as the entire school strike movement — are against any possible form of violence."

Thunberg has been traveling extensively to share her environmental message and to rally young people to join the fight against global warming but is now understood to be heading for home by boat and train, so she can take a break from campaigning.

On Thursday, United States President Donald Trump said she needed to "work on her anger management problem", to which Thunberg responded by changing her Twitter bio to read: "A teenager working on her anger management problem. Currently chilling and watching a good old fashioned movie with a friend."