It was a Saturday (12) of protests at COP27, the UN conference on climate change, which takes place in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt – a country where demonstrations are banned.
Amid reports of monitoring and harassment against civil society, several groups have come together calling for climate justice, under the slogan of “we are not defeated yet”.
Like the marches on Fridays, the marches on Saturday are also known as COPs. As part of the World Day of Action, protesters often take to the streets of venues that host climate conferences.
But this was not the time it happened in Egypt. The big march had to be held inside the gates of the complex that houses the climate conference.
The situation has been tense at COP27 for civil society. There are several reports of constraints in relation to freedom of expression, something that was already feared before the beginning of the conference – and that ended up materialized.
Also present at the march was British-Egyptian Sanaa Seif, sister of activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah, a political prisoner who is on hunger and water strike. In the early days of the COP, Seif was embarrassed by Amr Darwish, a member of the Egyptian parliament, who started a riot and was removed from the building by security guards. The politician questioned the idea of el-Fattah being a political prisoner.
During the demonstration, Seif carried, along with other protesters, a banner in Arabic that read: “There is no climate justice without human rights”. The translation was done through Google Translate.
This was not the only demonstration of the day.
Outside the conference venue, the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance also protested. The group’s march was surrounded by a long police cordon, the size of which was probably not far removed from the number of protesters present.
Under the desert sun and surrounded by lanes and police, with no presence other than the protesters themselves, the group was also calling for climate justice — and they weren’t too happy with the location they’d been assigned for the protest.
“At least we have the right to speak,” says Eugene Ndiboti, one of the protesters present. “We want to enjoy it, even though we are marching in the desert.”
The Planeta em Transe project is supported by the Open Society Foundations
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