CLIMATE JUSTICE ACTION
PRESS RELEASE
17th December 2009
Contact international media: +45 50669028
Contact Danish media: +45 41294994
media@climate-justice-action.org
VIDEO RELEASED OF COPENHAGEN OBSERVERS AGGRESSIVELY INTIMIDATED BY POLICE
Video came to light today of COP15 delegates being aggressively intimidated by police. (1) http://bit.ly/6DOBHe
Many delegates who marched out of the UN talks during Wednesday’s protests were intimidated and threatened with arrest by Danish police, preventing them from joining a People’s Assembly outside the conference.
Danish police were filmed as they surrounded and attacked official delegates who were attempting to join activists and other accredited observers to form a Peoples’ Assembly calling for climate justice.
Kevin Smith from Carbon Trade Watch, who was hit by the police on the bridge, said: “We were trying to reach the point where the Peoples’ Assembly was being held in order to have a discussion about the need for real alternatives to the false solutions being promoted inside the climate talks. It’s hugely shaming for both the UN and the Danish government that they are willing to use batons, pepper spray, police dogs and tear gas to try and stop these critical discussions from taking place.”
Camila Moreno, a representative from Brazil for the Global Justice Ecology Project: “It was a trap. They knew it, they never had any intention of allowing us to get to our friends on the other side of the bridge. It was a combination of the Danish police and the UN.”
Eriel Tchekwie Deranger from the Indigenous Environmental Network said: “They didn’t want information from those on the inside being conveyed to those on the outside, especially by strong voices from the global South.”
Dorothy Guerrero, Focus On The Global South representative from the Philippines, said: “The restriction on our movement hindered the Peoples’ Assembly, which was an alternative space from the official agenda. For many of us from the South we are used to seeing that in our own countries, but for a country that has a reputation like Denmark it is quite shocking. The fact that they are shutting people out is in many ways like shutting out the majority voice.”
ENDS
NOTES
(1) Footage available on youtube http://bit.ly/6DOBHe
Video by Jess Worth from the New Internationalist
For high quality footage, contact Climate Justice Action on +45 50669028
Absolutely incredible/tremendous coverage from COP-15 folks! Can’t underscore that enough! Dorothy Guerrero’s comment above says so much — “The fact that they are shutting people out is in many ways like shutting out the majority voice.”
We are INDEED the majority voice in all of this.
Let’s not let the “immoral minority” drown us all.