Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg has joined a protest titled Stop Greenwashing Genocide! outside the UN Armenia office in Yerevan, protesting against the decision to allow Azerbaijan to host the climate change conference.

Demonstrators sounded the alarm about the impact of Azerbaijan’s actions both on human rights and environmental protection.

Organizers of the demonstration, addressing all those who have agreed for the conference to be held by authoritarian Azerbaijan, said that by doing so they are effectively supporting Azerbaijan’s actions, particularly the crimes committed against the people of Nagorno-Karabakh, instead of supporting the In Solidarity for a Green World slogan.

Thunberg again decried the selection of Azerbaijan as the host country of COP29. She described the country as an authoritarian petrostate that has no respect for basic human rights.

In her speech outside the UN office, Thunberg called on the world leaders at COP29 who are in Baku, “to go and visit Armenian hostages and demand an immediate release to all political prisoners, prisoners of war and hostages.”

     “It is nauseating how during a rapidly escalating existential climate emergency yet again the annual COP meeting is being held in an authoritarian petrostate that has no respect for basic human rights whatsoever,” Thunberg said.  “Azerbaijan has blood on its hands, both towards its own population with repression, an ever-increasing crackdown on civil society, but also the ethnic cleansing and genocidal acts against the Artsakhi [NK]Armenians, the torture, the forced displacement and the continuous physical and psychological violence that they had gone through is unacceptable. Azerbaijan is a country heavily dependent on fossil fuels that is planning to expand its fossil fuel production, not to mention it’s exporting huge amounts of fossil fuels to Israel, and is therefore fundamental part of Israeli war machine and genocide. It should not be possible for a state like Azerbaijan to commit ethnic cleansing and not be held accountable. But now that violence is not only met by silence from the world, Azerbaijan is also given the platform and legitimacy on the world stage once again to greenwash, peace-wash, and whitewash their extreme human rights abuses. When we say climate justice, we mean justice for everyone, we cannot pretend to be caring about the climate in an environment when countries like Azerbaijan, that is responsible and complicit in ethnic cleansing and genocide, gets to set the agenda. A country that obviously has no intention of doing real climate action. We cannot have climate justice without social justice, and we cannot have social and climate justice without demanding justice for all marginalized groups, including Armenians. It is despicable and gut-wrenching that the world is continuously silent with these military aggressions and with these horrific acts that Azerbaijan is guilty of. We urge everyone who can to speak up against this and to demand freedom and justice for all those affected by this. And we urge international media and those in power, who are in Baku, to go and visit Armenian hostages and demand an immediate release to all political prisoners, prisoners of war and hostages.   We will not fall for the lies of Azerbaijan when they are trying to greenwash their ethnic cleansing and crimes.”

Margarita Karamyan, a demonstrator who was forced to leave her home in Hadrut, Nagorno-Karabakh during the Azeri attack, said that holding COP29 in Azerbaijan is “the collapse of world politics.”

“Azerbaijan has appropriated Nagorno-Karabakh’s nature, soil, forests and waters. Today terrorists are living in the homes of Artsakhis. Killing Armenian children and the elderly, Azerbaijan wants to blindfold the world,” she said.

Human rights activist Nina Karapetyants said that the international organizations created by mankind failed to respond to the genocide against the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh in the 21st century. And these very organizations, she said, are now participating in a climate change conference in the country that perpetrated the genocide.

She also criticized UN Secretary General António Guterres for attending the COP29.

“The UN chief, who not only has the opportunity but also the obligation of genocide prevention, goes to Baku to participate in these events,” she said, adding that the attendees of the conference in Baku will be complicit in future genocides.

Other demonstrators spoke about the disastrous situation in Nagorno-Karabakh before the ethnic cleansing, when so-called Azeri environmental activists had blockaded Nagorno-Karabakh, leading to severe shortages of essential goods

Demonstrator Artur Osipyan said the purpose of the protest is to express discontent and concern over holding COP29 in Azerbaijan, a country that has violated international law and norms.

He said he was surprised to see Guterres attend the event and not condemn Azerbaijan neither for failing to release Armenian captives nor its genocidal actions in Nagorno-Karabakh.

The demonstrators conveyed a letter to the UN Armenia office, calling on the UN to utilize all available mechanisms to contribute to establishing peace and mutual trust in the region, and to refrain from legitimizing the inhumane policies of the Azerbaijani regime. The demonstrators called on the UN to condemn Azerbaijan for its war crimes, ethnic cleansing and other human rights abuses, as well as ecological crimes and destruction of Armenian cultural heritage in Nagorno-Karabakh and hold Baku accountable.

Published by Armenpress, original at https://armenpress.am/en/article/1205056

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