Greta Thunberg protests against Azerbaijan hosting global climate summit
UNB
Publish: 12 Nov 2024, 03:53 PM
TBILISI,
Georgia, Nov 12 (AP/UNB) - Climate activist Greta Thunberg on Monday attended a
rally in Georgia to protest against Azerbaijan hosting the annual United
Nations climate talks.
Thunberg and scores of
other activists who rallied in Tbilisi, the capital of the South Caucasus
nation, argued that Azerbaijan doesn't deserve to host the climate talks
because of its repressive policies.
U.N. climate talks,
called COP29, opened Monday in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, a major oil
producer where the world's first oil well was drilled.
Thunberg described
Azerbaijan as "a repressive, occupying state, which has committed ethnic
cleansing, and which is continuing cracking down on Azerbaijani civil
society." She charged that the Caspian Sea nation has used the summit as
"a chance to greenwash their crimes and human rights abuses."
"We can't give them
any legitimacy in this situation, which is why we are standing here and saying
no to greenwashing and no to the Azerbaijani regime," she said.
Azerbaijan has committed
to clean energy projects, but critics have argued that's just to export more
oil and gas.
Azerbaijani President
Ilham Aliyev has been in power since 2003 when he succeeded his father who died
after ruling the oil rich nation for the previous decade. He has been accused
by critics of intolerance to dissent and freedom of speech.
Earlier this year,
Aliyev won another seven-year presidential term in an election that monitors
from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said took place in
a "restrictive environment" with no real political competition.
Aliyev called the early vote while enjoying a surge in popularity after
Azerbaijani forces in September 2023 swiftly reclaimed the Karabakh region from
ethnic Armenian separatists, who had controlled it for three decades.
After Azerbaijan
regained full control of Karabakh, most of its 120,000 Armenian residents fled.
The Azerbaijani authorities, however, said they were welcome to stay and
promised their human rights would be ensured.
Thunberg, 21, has
inspired a global youth movement demanding stronger efforts to fight climate
change after staging weekly protests outside the Swedish parliament starting in
2018.
The European climate
service Copernicus announced earlier this month that the world is on pace for
1.5 degrees of warming this year, which is heading to become the hottest year
in human civilization.
Speaking at the rally in
Tbilisi on Monday, Thunberg emphasized that the hottest year ever recorded
comes after global greenhouse gas emissions reached an all time high last year.
Holding the climate change conference "in an authoritarian petro state is
beyond absurd," she said.
End/UNB/AP/SU