"Fridays for the Future": European politicians signed new gas deals with the Azerbaijani dictator under the guise of ethnic cleansing in Artsakh
ArmInfo. The Fridays For Future
movement responded to the UN climate summit (COP29) being held in
Azerbaijan
Thus, the initiative on its Instagram page, which has 443 thousand
followers, notes that Azerbaijan exploited environmental protests as
a front for starting the 9 months blockade of Artsakh/Nagorno-
Karabagh, which resulted in a complete ethnic cleansing of the
indigenous Armenian population and the continued destruction and
re-appropriation of Armenian cultural heritage in the region. While
these events unfolded unnoticed by the international community,
European politicians were signing new gas deals with the Azerbaijani
dictator, whose family has been in power for three decades.
Succeeding his father, Ilham Aliyev is ruling the country with his
wife as vice-president", the initiative said in a statement.
At the same time, it is emphasized that these politicians and
companies are complicit in the authoritarian regime, "greenwashing"
of genocide."Around 40% of Israel's oil is imported from Azerbaijan,
fueling war machines against Palestinians. In return, Azerbaijan
receives 70% of its weapons from Israel for use against Armenians",
Fridays for Future notes.
In this vein, it is added that civil society in Azerbaijan is
oppressed tremendously and, according to the Freedom Index,
Azerbaijan is consistently ranked among the most oppressive countries
in the world.
"Azerbaijan is now threatening to start a new war against Armenia,
calling the capital of Armenia "West Azerbaijan," the statement
further reads.
At the same time, the initiative points to the key demands of
Armenian civil society for the UN Climate Summit. In particular, the
release of all political prisoners (both Azerbaijani and Armenian)
and prisoners of war; guarantee the right of return and their safety
for indigenous Armenian people to Artsakh by implementing
international peacekeepers; guaranteeing safety for Armenia itself
and the peace agreement; return of lands occupied during and after
the 2020 war. Fridays For Future is a youth-led and organized
movement that began in August 2018, after 15-year-old Greta Thunberg
and other young activists sat in front of the Swedish parliament
every school day for three weeks, to protest the lack of action on
climate crisis. She posted what she was doing on Instagram and
Twitter and it soon went viral.
By the following year, it had snowballed into a global movement
involving some 4 million students in 150 countries. In June, Greta
graduated, marking the end of her school protest days. But the young
activist's legacy lives on, with hundreds of strikes scheduled each
Friday around the globe.
This is an international social movement of schoolchildren and
students, whose participants demand "quick and decisive action" from
politicians in the fight against global warming.