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Greenwashing a police state: the truth behind Egypt’s Cop27 masquerade | Cop27 | The Guardian

Source: Greenwashing a police state: the truth behind Egypt’s Cop27 masquerade | Cop27 | The Guardian

The Egyptian regime is eager to celebrate its official climate “youth leaders”, holding them up as symbols of hope in the battle against warming. But it’s hard not to think of the courageous youth leaders of the Arab spring, many of them now prematurely aged by more than a decade of state violence and harassment from systems that are lavishly bankrolled by military aid from western powers, particularly the US. It’s almost as if those activists have just been substituted by newer, less troublesome models.

“I’m the ghost of spring past,” Abd El-Fattah wrote about himself in 2019. That ghost will haunt the coming summit, sending a chill through its every high-minded word. The silent question it poses is stark: if international solidarity is too weak to save Abd El-Fattah – the symbol of a generation’s dreams – what hope do we have of saving a habitable home?

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