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YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 14, ARMENPRESS. Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg on Thursday attended a conference titled The Impact of Azerbaijan’s Aggression on Human Rights and Environmental Protection, A Side Event of COP29 organized in Armenia.
Thunberg slammed the UN's decision to allow Azerbaijan to host its annual climate summit as “extreme hypocrisy," given the country's poor track record.
"My position is very clear. The main principle regarding climate is that my and many other activists' agendas are completely incompatible with the agenda of the Azerbaijani side and contradict the reality that exists in Azerbaijan. It is simply nauseating when we witness such hypocrisy. The fact that the COP-29 conference is taking place in Azerbaijan is just an extreme manifestation of hypocrisy," Thunberg said.
She also criticized the international community’s silence on Baku’s gross human rights violations.
"The world is silent and tacitly gives Azerbaijan the opportunity to act in this way. This is not the only case. We should stop pretending and not seeing that the conference dedicated to the climate is being held in a country where there are repressive approaches, where one's own people are oppressed. Human rights defenders and eco-activists in that country say that they live like in a prison, that the state does not protect their rights. We are talking about the problem today, while the civil society there is continuously under pressure. Those who are in favor of change and speak about it, their voices are consistently silenced," Thunberg said.
Speaking about the ethnic cleansing carried out in Nagorno-Karabakh, the Swedish activist stressed that Azerbaijan is definitely responsible for it.
According to her, the continuous suffering that Armenians went through as a result of Azerbaijan's military aggression, as well as torture and forced displacement, physical and psychological atrocities are absolutely unacceptable and intolerable.
"It is sad that the world continues to remain silent and allows Azerbaijan to cover up its crimes by holding such a conference. Azerbaijan certainly wants to expand oil and gas production. Many countries, which import these energy carriers from Azerbaijan, consistently turn a blind eye to its behavior. If we are fighting for justice, then it should apply equally to everyone. There should be justice for everyone," Thunberg concluded.
Thunberg has boycotted the ongoing COP-29 in Baku. Speaking Monday at a protest in Tbilisi, Georgia, she called the summit’s host Azerbaijan “an authoritarian petrostate” and added that the choice of location was “beyond absurd,” according to WaPo.
According to AP, Thunberg described Azerbaijan as “a repressive, occupying state, which has committed ethnic cleansing, and which is continuing cracking down on Azerbaijani civil society.”
She charged that Azerbaijan has used the summit as “a chance to greenwash their crimes and human rights abuses,” AP reported.
“We can’t give them any legitimacy in this situation, which is why we are standing here and saying no to greenwashing and no to the Azerbaijani regime,” she said in Tbilisi on Monday.