"When we talk about climate justice, we demand an end to greenwashing & pollution colonialism!"

On April 19th 2024, we marched the streets for the first anti-colonial climate justice strike led by BIPOC4future, Migrants for Future, Debt for Climate, Palestine Speaks, Alliance of Internationalist Feminists, and Jüdische Stimme.  Read the speech by IW*S held by Ann here:

This year marked the 10th anniversary of the eviction of the O-Platz Movement. We still remember the demands and the echoes of the voices of thousands of people saying: “You cannot evict a movement’. This month, Europe and Germany continue to wage their racial and fascist war against refugees and migrants!

Germany has retrogressed and fascism is present everywhere. Our fight continues.

The EU effectively abolished the fundamental right to asylum. In Germany, mass accommodation centers for refugees, the Lager, will force refugees to work for a sum of money that is beyond inhumane. For 80 cents an hour, refugees will have the obligation to work – often doing the cleaning services that the state is not willing to pay for. If they refuse to work, their benefits can be cut by 180 euros per month. The degradation and dehumanization has no limits. Germany has reimplemented new forms of Residenzpflicht and “Bezahlkarten” – cards that will determine where refugees can buy what goods and services. Refugees will no longer be able to pay in cash. Bezahlkarten are disenfranchising, unconstitutional,  and racist!

EU politicians have agreed on faster asylum procedures, more deportations and less money for refugees with the GEAS reform. GEAS will relieve singular countries of the EU from their responsibility for migration. The EURODAC, the European database is a violent surveillance tool and enforces the EU’s discriminatory and hostile asylum and migration policies, increasing deportations, detentions and a broader climate of racialised criminalisation. People will be deported to countries they have never lived in. Refugees are burning the skin on their thumbs to prevent their fingerprints and, thus, their data from being saved.

So many refugees die on their way to Europe, are found dead without proper investigation when they arrive, or commit suicide because these experiences are so painful.

Having a neutral stance towards things that kill us is not an option for us. This includes climate change!

One person is likely of dying from hunger every 48 seconds in drought-ravaged countries in Africa! Nothing about the climate crisis is natural– it is rooted in the history of colonialism, imperialism, white supremacy, and capitalism. Death through famine occurs because our lands can no longer produce enough food. When it doesn’t rain, we die, when it does, we die. With industrial ships the size of airplanes, Europe profits by overfishing our African coasts, leaving our countries with nothing. Droughts, earthquakes, heatwaves and floods have become far too frequent! It is the reason climate refugees and migrants are forced to leave.

Climate change is political! Migration is a right! Seeking asylum is a right!

Carbon is turned into a commodity that can be traded. Again, the Global South is becoming an investment opportunity where our lands are commodified. This relation takes away the emission rights from the local communities to polluters, who want to finance their own industrialization and capitalist processes. The Global North is dumping its waste into the Global South. By outsourcing its waste the Global North relieves itself of the responsibility of managing consumerism and waste management.  The so-called “sustainable forestry” of the Global North seeks to plant monoculture tree plantations in African countries. Under ‘green capitalism’ locals suffer from the loss of crops, forest resources and livelihoods. Now, the EU has the so-called RePowerEU, which is part of Europe’s Green Deal. RePowerEU is aimed at finding alternatives sources of energy for Europe. These alternatives are Europe’s latest neocolonial resource grab.

Politicians who deny climate change actively support right-wing parties; fossil is feeding fascism!

Planting trees in the Global South is ineffective, it will do nothing for the carbon stored below ground and it is unsustainable:  it is based on land grabbing, deforestation, biodiversity loss, food insecurity, and conflicts. It takes away the way local and Indigenous rights and culture, the way they interact with their land and the economic and social system tied to it.  Even though the countries in the Global South emit the least, they are given this responsibility, while the West continues its status quo.

We see through your motives of profitability!

When we talk about climate justice we demand an end to greenwashing and this pollution colonialism!  

Extreme weather conditions occur after a land, its infrastructure and its resources have been exploited. Whether it is the American occupation effectively shutting down the agricultural sector and exports in Haiti, or the extraction of cobalt, copper, gold, lithium and other minerals in the Democratic Republic of Congo, or the floods in Pakistan, the land theft in Palestine– we see how when it comes to resources, imperialist countries will corrupt our governments, support genocide and walk over dead bodies. We cannot create climate justice by using the same tools that brought us here in the first place- Capitalism, consumerism, extractivism, and a white supremacist gaze!

We see through your fossil fuel fascism, neo-colonial resource grab and the suffering caused by extractive capitalism!

Despite all that has happened to us we remain resilient! We are here and we will stay here! 

As grassroots organizations all around the world: When we unite, we are strong!