Activists scaled back their usual march at a United Nations climate summit in Egypt, where public demonstrations are banned and activists have faced a crackdown on dissent.
Instead of taking to the streets as usual, they organized the march at the center of the COP27 convention in Sharm el-Sheikh.
“We, as movements, celebrate this specific moment here in the official place for security reasons,” said Gadir Lavadenz of the Global Campaign to Demand Justice.
The territory of a COP summit temporarily becomes a foreign territory governed through the UN, where foreign law applies, exempting it from local jurisdiction.
Traditionally, activists hold a weekend protest halfway through the two-week summit, aiming to raise other voices and pressure nepastiadores and ministers to go further. They say they provide a counterweight to the narrative of fossil fuel industry participants, whose numbers are higher this year.
“We can’t make our voices heard outside, but we will make our voices heard here,” Tasneem Essop, director of the Climate Action Network, said in a speech to the crowd.
Last year, tens of thousands more marched through the streets of Glasgow at the COP26 climate summit. On Saturday, according to organizers, only a thousand more people passed through the convention headquarters area, holding banners and banners and making a song through megaphones.
Egypt has created a designated zone for this year’s protest, but it is fenced off and guarded by police, far from the main conference. About thirty young Egyptians piled up there in a blank line with banners and chanting “Save our planet,” but not shy away blaming anyone.
“It doesn’t make sense to us. . . The concept is to make noiseArray. . . to disrupt and disturb things, of course in a non-violent state of mind,” Gadir Lavadenz told Sky News. Otherwise, it’s a protest, he said.
Activist Emiliana, who arrived from Chile, said she felt safer to participate in a march within the domain of the convention “because there are several teams organizing this together and because we are in a position under the cover of the UN. “
She wanted to join the protest because “it is vital to express the voices of other countries. . . of Latin America and the voices of the countries of the South”.
He added: “If you don’t hear them in the big halls, those closed-door meetings, you have to hear them somewhere. “
Authorities say demonstrations “similar” to other COPs are allowed. But activists, who see the annual assembly as an opportunity to sound the global alarm about bad weather, say restrictions on civil society since the ouster of Egypt’s first democratically elected president in 2013 have been tarnished. the Conference.
They also accuse Cairo of quelling protests by holding COP27 in the Red Sea resort than in the much busier capital. it can only be used to hack personal calls and messages, Politico reported.
Egypt’s presidency has also been marred by protests over jailed British-Egyptian and human rights defender Alaa Abd El-Fattah, whose sister Sanaa Seif travelled from London to COP27 to raise awareness of her brother’s plight.
An Egyptian parliamentarian, Amr Darwish, a staunch supporter of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s regime, interrupted his speech at the UN convention domain on Tuesday and was temporarily expelled from the room.
The starved striker’s sister has since been informed that a pro-government lawyer has filed a lawsuit against her, accusing her of spying and “spreading false news. “
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