"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.