Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg joined a protest titled “Stop Greenwashing Genocide!” outside the United Nations (UN) office in Yerevan, Armenia. The demonstration was organized in response to the UN’s decision to allow Azerbaijan to host the COP29 climate conference, despite its history of aggression against the people of Artsakh, its authoritarian policies, and Armenophobic rhetoric.
Thunberg condemned Azerbaijan as an authoritarian petrostate that perpetuates human rights abuses, highlighting the international community’s complicity in granting it a global platform. “It is nauseating how during a rapidly escalating climate crisis, the annual COP meeting is held in a state that shows no respect for basic human rights,” she said, referencing Azerbaijan’s acts of ethnic cleansing and violence against Artsakh Armenians.
Demonstrators at the protest sounded the alarm about the impact of Azerbaijan’s actions on both human rights and environmental protection. Organizers addressed those who agreed to hold COP29 in Azerbaijan, stating that by doing so, they effectively support Azerbaijan’s actions, particularly the crimes committed against the people of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), rather than standing for the “In Solidarity for a Green World” slogan.
In her speech, Thunberg called on the world leaders and others attending COP29 in Baku, “to go and visit Armenian hostages and demand an immediate release to all political prisoners, prisoners of war and hostages.”
She continued, “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 Armenians. The torture, the forced displacement, and the continuous physical and psychological violence that they have endured 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 a fundamental part of the Israeli war machine and genocide.”
Thunberg emphasized that such states should not escape accountability. “It should not be possible for a state like Azerbaijan to commit ethnic cleansing and not be held accountable. Yet, now that violence is not only met by silence from the world, Azerbaijan is also given the platform and legitimacy on the world stage 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 care about the climate in an environment where countries like Azerbaijan, responsible and complicit in ethnic cleansing and genocide, get 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. iIt is despicable and gut-wrenching that the world is continuously silent in the face of these military aggressions and 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.”
The protesters delivered a letter to the UN Armenia office, urging the organization to condemn Azerbaijan’s war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and destruction of Armenian cultural heritage Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh). They called on the UN to utilize all available mechanisms to promote peace and mutual trust in the region, hold Azerbaijan accountable for its human rights and ecological abuses, and refrain from legitimizing its inhumane policies.
