Prominent climate activist Greta Thunberg leads protest in Tbilisi, Georgia as Azerbaijan hosts COP29 climate conference.
Thunberg earlier announced she would not be attending COP29 over Azerbaijan’s climate and human rights record.
Thunberg wrote on social media, “Azerbaijan, using COP29 as a façade, is ramping up control under a false ‘green’ agenda, tightening its grip on power, and escalating regional tensions.”
“The Azerbaijan regime is guilty of ethnic cleansing, humanitarian blockades and war crimes, as well as repressing its own population and cracking down on the country’s civil society, Greta said in an op-ed published by The Guardian.
“The independent watchdog Freedom House ranks the country as the least democratic state in Europe, with the regime actively targeting journalists, independent media outlets, political and civic activists, and human rights defenders. Azerbaijan also accounts for about 40% of Israel’s annual oil imports, thus fuelling the Israeli war machine and being complicit in the genocide in Palestine and Israel’s war crimes in Lebanon. The Azerbaijan-Israel ties are mutually beneficial as the majority of weapons used by Azerbaijan during the second Nagorno-Karabakh war and likely those used in the September 2023 military operation into the Karabakh region were imported from Israel,” she wrote.
“The “Cop of peace” is one theme chosen for this year’s climate conference by the host, which wants to encourage states to observe a “Cop truce.” It is gut-wrenching, to say the least, to talk of global peace after the terrible human rights violations committed by Azerbaijan’s Aliyev regime against ethnic Armenians living in the Nagorno-Karabakh/Artsakh region. Furthermore, Azerbaijan is planning to greenwash its crimes against Armenians by building a “Green Energy Zone” on territories where the population has been ethnically cleansed,” she emphasized.
