Thunberg decried the world’s “hypocrisy” as she visited Armenia to underscore her boycott of the annual UN summit on climate change that began on Monday. She arrived in the country from neighboring Georgia where she staged a protest outside the Azerbaijani Embassy in Tbilisi.
“Climate justice without social justice is not justice,” she told a conference in Yerevan organized by local environment protection groups. “For the same reason, we cannot continue pretending that conferences like COP which are continuously held in states which have no basic respect for human rights … are going to lead to meaningful change.”
Thunberg pointed to Baku’s poor human rights record, “crackdown on civil society” and “terrible crimes” against Armenians. Instead of being held accountable, she said, the Azerbaijani authorities are “given a pass and legitimacy and platform on the world stage to legitimize these extreme human rights abuses and ethnic cleansing.”
“The ethnic cleansing that Azerbaijan is guilty of and the continuous extreme hardships that many Armenians are facing because of the Azerbaijani military aggression, the torture, forcible displacements, prisoners of war, hostages, extreme physical and psychological violence that people have experienced can in no way be justified. And the fact that the world remains silent and lets Azerbaijan greenwash these crimes is absolutely unacceptable,” she said.
Countries buying Azerbaijani oil and gas are “complicit” in those crimes, she added during the conference held at the American University of Armenia.
Thunberg, 21, became the face of young climate activists after her weekly protests, starting in 2018, next to the Swedish parliament quickly grew into a global youth movement with large rallies across continents. She has repeatedly been detained during such protests staged in Sweden and other European countries.
Armenia was among the countries that approved the choice of Baku as the venue of COP29. The decision was part of a deal that led to the release last December of 32 Armenian soldiers and civilians held in Azerbaijan. Armenian officials were reportedly ready to attend the two-week global summit in return for the release of more Armenian captives. None of them has been freed so far.