Cop27 Summit Climate Activists Protested During Biden S Speech And Were Kicked Out

  Four US climate activists were kicked out of the UN COP27 climate talks in Egypt after protesting US President Joe Biden’s speech on Friday.   

  The group briefly interrupted Biden’s speech with what it described as an indigenous war cry, then unfurled a banner reading “People vs. Fossil Fuels.”  While Biden seemed mostly unfazed by the protest — pausing briefly before continuing his speech — the four activists faced fallout.   

  They told CNN they were barred by security from leaving the hall after the speech ended, had their summit passes taken away and were escorted out of the venue by UN security.   

  “Security said we put people’s lives in danger because we stood up in the room with the President of the United States,” Jamie Weffeld, one of the protesters, told CNN on Monday.  “And I said I understand, but just to be clear, you knew we didn’t have weapons because we have to go through very extensive security to get into the COP in general, and they said, ‘Well, no security is 100%.'”   

  It is unclear whether the group broke any rules by staging the protest, which was mostly silent and did not involve protesters leaving their seats.  The UNFCCC, the UN body sponsoring the talks and responsible for space security, did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.   

  CNN saw three of the activists being denied entry to the site on Monday afternoon, with UN staff telling them they have been suspended.  CNN has reached out to the White House for comment, but has not heard back.   

  The episode is just the latest example of the somewhat heavy-handed approach to protests taken by the United Nations and the Egyptian government at the conference held in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.   

  The annual conference has always been seen as the place where activists and members of civil society groups can interact with government officials and witness the negotiations first hand.   

  Huge protests and loud calls for action have become part of the event over the years.  When climate activists marched through the streets of Glasgow during the COP26 conference last November, it was one of the biggest demonstrations the UK has ever seen.  At COP25 in Madrid in 2019, tens of thousands of protesters filled the city center, as they did the previous year in the Polish city of Katowice, which was hosting COP24.   

  But at this year’s iteration of the summit, protesters have mostly been sidelined in venues away from the negotiations.   

  The biggest protest of the summit took place inside the conference on Saturday, when a large group of people marched through the venue, calling on rich countries to pay the world’s most vulnerable countries for the losses and damages caused by the climate crisis.   

  But most other protests have been so small that they’re almost hard to spot by anyone who doesn’t know they’re happening.   

  A small group of activists have staged protests around the site in recent days, holding banners calling for plant-based diets as a solution to the climate crisis.  On Monday, a group of young protesters from Fridays for Future took photos at the conference, calling on G20 leaders to act on the climate.   

  “It hurts to say this, but they don’t attract attention.  There is so much action happening in the COP space that makes sense – people whose communities, our communities, are affected are talking about it and offering solutions to these problems, but there is no coverage,” said Big Wind, activist on climate and a member of the Northern Arapaho tribe.   

  Demonstrations are rare – and mostly illegal – in Egypt, and the Egyptian government said anyone wishing to protest during the summit could only do so in a special designated “protest zone” away from the main conference venue.   

  To access the zone, people must register, a requirement that can scare off activists who fear surveillance.  Among the rules imposed by Egyptian authorities on the protests is a ban on the use of “personal items, such as satirical drawings of heads of state, negotiators, individuals”.   

  “All the meetings we had, I can only speak for myself, but they were really trying to instill fear in us, you know, it’s such a repressive state… but inside the [conference venue], which is supposed to be UN territory,” said Jacob Jones, another of the group of activists barred from the conference.  “And so for the United Nations to deny people freedom of speech in this space that’s supposed to be theirs is just, you know, a slap in the face.  It’s hypocrisy.”