Peking [China]September 29 (ANI): Swedish teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg hit China for arresting a 17-year-old climate activist in Shanghai, the South China Morning Post reported on Tuesday.
Thunberg tweeted, “Activism is not a crime. Peacefully standing up for the future survival of the living planet should never be illegal. Solidarity and gratitude to our friends in China, Uganda, Russia and everywhere else Fridays for future activists are arrested.” According to the South China Morning Post, Ou Hongyi, also known as China’s “first climate striker”, was arrested on Friday in Shanghai’s largest shopping area.
The 17-year-old in an Instagram post published on Sunday said she and three other protesters were arrested after three hours of silent protests. “Billions of people will die and children will die while parents lose their jobs. Non-violent civil disobedience climate movement is the only light in the dark that gives us the slightest hope,” she said.
Ou said she was stopped in Nanjing Road and taken to a nearby police station and released hours later. She posted a picture on Twitter on Sunday of a room that looked like an interrogation room.
“We just went on the global climate strike day with four people, advocates, on Nanjing Road, which is a very symbolic place in Shanghai, and we were arrested and interrogated for about two hours and I just got out of the police station,” she said in a video. after its release, as reported by the South China Morning Post.
In a Twitter post, she said she had to write a “letter of self-criticism”, a compulsory certificate of guilt used by Chinese police to intimidate activists.
“The government is the only institution that has the ability to protect its people but it failed,” she wrote, quoted by the South China Morning Post.
Like Thunberg, Ou also skipped lessons for a week last year to protest outside government buildings in his hometown of Guilin.
Guangxi Public Security Bureau has also questioned her and her protests have also been stopped by police. However, the state-funded organizations and non-governmental organizations have refused to allow the 17-year-old at events.
Ou’s protest comes two days after Chinese President Xi Jinping promised at the UN General Assembly that China would achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.
Andreas Fulda, an associate professor at the University of Nottingham’s School of Politics and International Relations in the UK, said that environmental campaigns have been difficult to run since Xi came to power.
“During the Hu and Wen eras, it was still possible for environmental organizations to campaign, for example against wasteful energy consumption or ruthless dam construction in southern China,” Fulda said, adding: “Since Xi came to power, there is room for Chinese civilians. society has shrunk dramatically. “” Such transnational solidarity with what can be called “unofficial China” is of great importance. Chinese citizens willing to tell the truth to power should be supported by the international community, “he added. (ANI)
Source: sn.dk