Day: September 25, 2021

LONDON/NAIROBI —

Young climate activists from Greta Thunberg’s Friday for Future movement resumed mass street protests on Friday for the first time since the pandemic began, demanding drastic action from global leaders ahead of U.N. climate talks in November.

From Nairobi to Washington, marchers — including Thunberg, who joined protests in Berlin — carried placards and homemade banners during the demonstrations, which drew fewer protesters than before COVID-19 in most cities.

“It’s slightly disappointing there are less people than there used to be, but people will come back. The problem is not going away,” said Erin Brodrick, 17, one of about 250 protesters in London’s Parliament Square.

Before the pandemic, the square often overflowed with activists during larger Friday marches.

Brodrick said young people “feel really scared about the future of the planet” as they see climate change impacts strengthen and emissions continue to rise, despite a raft of political promises to slash them.

But because underage protesters cannot vote, “what else can I do but come out here?” she said, wielding a green “Planet Over Politics” sign.

In Barcelona, about 200 youth activists, children and parents joined a protest around a cloth depicting the Earth, showing their support for a court action launched in June aimed at forcing the Spanish government to boost its climate policy.

Gathered in the Catalan capital’s main square, they also demanded a stop to a planned expansion of Barcelona’s airport.

Filip Frey, a 23-year-old Polish activist studying engineering in Barcelona, said younger people will be the ones who pay for the selfish actions of politicians who “only care about their publicity, their money, their power.”

“We are just furious and angry,” he said, urging society as a whole to join the youth protests. “If we don’t do anything, nothing will change and we will just burn or drown.”

‘Not being heard’

In Nairobi, where about 30 activists in green-and-white T-shirts gathered in a central park, many said there was little evidence politicians were listening to their pleas to work faster to cut emissions and curb climate risks.

“Young people have been speaking up for years now and there is a lot of impatience … We want to begin seeing governments taking rapid action,” said Elizabeth Wathuti, head of campaigns for the Wangari Maathai Foundation, a local environmental group.

“We’ve been speaking out about this, but our voices are not being heard,” she said, adding that “we’re the ones that have to live with the consequences of the inaction.”

Patricia Kombo, another activist, said one aim of the protest was to push politicians to commit to more aggressive action on climate change ahead of the upcoming international COP26 U.N. climate negotiations in Glasgow, starting Oct. 31.

“We’ve had a lot of climate talks but what we get is empty promises. We want real climate action at COP26 because we can’t wait any longer,” she said as activists waved signs saying, “Stand up for climate justice” and “Later is too late.”

Protesters gathered in Washington said they were pushing for a comprehensive $3.5 trillion national U.S. climate bill and an immediate transition to green energy, said Magnolia Mead, one of the organizers.

Jamie Minden, 18, a student at Washington’s American University, said the movement’s return to large-scale protests was crucial to keeping up pressure for climate action.

“It is so critical to get back out in the streets – it’s not the same online,” she said. Street protests “get a lot more attention.”

Activist Shelby Grace Tucker, 14, who had come to the protest from Baltimore, said getting back on the streets felt “really empowering” and was a way for younger people – who might not otherwise be able to garner attention, to “still make a difference.”

Merging movements

To weather the pandemic, Fridays for Future largely moved online, with education programs and other events, though small groups continued to protest on the streets.

But the group also used the time to try to broaden the movement and coordinate its work with social pushes on other issues including race.

Sasha Langeveldt, 24, a Black Fridays for Future activist now working for the Friends of the Earth nonprofit, said that as activists grew older the movement needed to focus more on turning protesters into voters.

Langeveldt said young people were increasingly taking climate action into their own hands as well, citing an online green jobs summit in London she is helping organize in October. “We want to show politicians things can actually change,” she said.

Rowan Riley, 29, a London architect at the protest, agreed, saying he was now part of the London Energy Transformation Initiative, working on changing building design and regulation with climate change and renewable energy in mind. “We have to find other ways to influence things. It’s not always about the numbers at protests,” he said.

Carrying a “Grandparents and Elders” flag at the London march, Pat Farrington, 78, said she wanted to see governments “take everything more seriously.”

That should include training more young people for green jobs like installing insulation or solar panels, and doing more to help the public understand the potential economic benefits of a climate-smart transition.

“Right now, people say, ‘I can’t afford a posh electric car,’ and they feel their pockets are being picked,” she said.

Source: Voice of America

BAKINGILI, CAMEROON —

Conflict between Cameroonians and local wildlife has led to street protests Saturday in the western village of Bakingili. Farmers and villagers say elephants are destroying their plantations and scores of houses, reportedly leading to the killing of two elephants this month. Authorities blame locals for occupying elephant habitats and caution against killing the endangered animals.

More than 200 villagers marched, demanding help in Bakingilli, a farming village in Cameroon’s English-speaking South-West region.

The villagers say elephants have destroyed more than 250 banana, plantain, corn and bean plantations. They say several dozen homes also have been destroyed by elephants in the past two months.

Vincent Njie, who says he is the spokesperson for the villagers, said Saturday’s protest is the third in two months. Njie said villagers do not understand why the government is reluctant to help kill or chase the animals out of Bakingili.

“The elephants come out even at daytime, scaring even school children. The principals (teachers) are even afraid to go to school because they think that if they go there they will meet elephants. Elephants should be evicted so that we continue our normal lives. Most of the people living in Bakinggili rely on farming. Please, we need help,” Nije said.

Bakingili lies at the foot of Mount Cameroon, known locally as Mount Fako. In 2009, Cameroon’s government created the 58,000-hectare Mount Cameroon National Park to protect biodiversity.

The government said that between 2009 to 2019, the elephant population in the park increased from less than 170 to about 300.

Delphine Ikome, the highest-ranking government wildlife official in Cameroon’s South-West region, says most of the forest where elephants live has been turned into plantations and villages, provoking conflicts between the gigantic animals and humans.

“These elephants that we are protecting have become a threat to the community around this protected area, the Mount Cameroon National Park. We have come here to appeal to the population of Bakingili, to tell them to conserve our protected areas to improve the livelihoods of our local communities,” Ikome said.

She said elephants are critically endangered because of habitat loss and fragmentation. She said elephants roam over long distances and play a key role in spreading tree seedlings to balance natural ecosystems and reduce climate change.

The villagers said they killed two elephants in the park this month. Wildlife officials have yet to confirm the deaths.

A conservation group, The Last Great Ape, or LAGA, has been protecting elephants in Cameroon. The group’s vice president, Eric Kabah Tah, says the government has a responsibility to protect both its citizens and its wildlife.

“The government should learn lessons from other areas where such conflicts have been successfully resolved through the use of some conservation methods to send away the animals and ensure that both parties live in peace. Certain sounds are played in such a way that it could scare off the wildlife. But there should be long-term solutions such that humans should be able to understand where the limits of their area is so that they don’t encroach into wildlife habitat to avoid such conflicts,” Tah said.

Cameroon has an estimated 6,500 elephants. Conservation groups such as LAGA say the country still has one of the largest elephant populations left in Africa.

Source: Voice of America

At least eight people were killed Saturday and nine others injured when a car bomb exploded on a street corner near the president’s residence in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu.

Witnesses said a car loaded with explosives was detonated at the Elgab intersection while it was stopped for a security check. The blast destroyed a number of cars parked nearby, witnesses added.

Somali police spokesman Major Mohamed Hassan told VOA that eight people, including a police officer, were killed in the blast.

Militant group al-Shabab has claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it targeted the main security checkpoint of the presidential palace. The group said, “Commanders and government officials stayed in the area when the attack occurred.”

Somali government spokesman Mohamed Ibrahim Moalimuu said in a message posted on his Facebook page that Hibaaq Abukar, who was a staffer at the office of the prime minister, was among those killed in the attack.

Somalia Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble said Abukar was an active member of a team dealing with women’s issues.

Ambulances and Red Crescent workers were seen rushing to the scene after the explosion.

On Friday, a suicide bomber attacked a busy street. Somali police said the bomber struck around 3 p.m. local time and there were no causalities except “for the one who killed himself.”

Somalia’s political crisis intensified Friday when negotiations to reconcile issues between the president and prime minister failed. Regional experts warn if the power struggle between leaders continues, the country could sink into a civil war and the election timeline could be delayed.

Source: Voice of America

TUNIS, TUNISIA —

More than 100 officials of Tunisia’s Islamist party Ennahda announced their resignations Saturday to protest the choices of the movement’s leadership in confronting the North African country’s political crisis.

The split within the ranks of Ennahda comes amid a deep political crisis in Tunisia. In July, President Kaïs Saied’s decided to sack the country’s prime minister, suspend parliament and assume executive authority, saying it was because of a national emergency. His critics called it a coup.

In a statement released Saturday, 113 officials from Ennahda, including lawmakers and former ministers, said they had resigned.

“This is a definitive and irrevocable decision,” Samir Dilou, an Ennahda lawmaker and minister from 2011 to 2014, told The Associated Press.

Dilou said the decision to resign was linked to the “impossibility of reforming the party from the inside” because of decisions being made by the head of the party, Rachid Ghannouchi, and his entourage. He also noted that Ennahda, the largest party in parliament, has failed to counter Saied’s actions.

Earlier this week, Saied issued presidential decrees bolstering the already near-total power he granted himself two months ago.

Wednesday’s decrees include the continuing suspension of parliament’s powers, the suspension of all lawmakers’ immunity from prosecution and a freeze on lawmakers’ salaries.

They also stated Saied’s intention from now on to rule by presidential decree alone and ignore parts of the constitution. Laws will not go through the parliament, whose powers are frozen, granting him near-unlimited power.

Saied said his July decision was needed to save the country amid unrest over financial troubles and the government’s handling of Tunisia’s coronavirus crisis.

Source: Voice of America