Amsterdam [Netherlands], November 14: Controversy over remarks by a Palestinian activist at a climate change demonstration in Amsterdam at the weekend has led organizers of the event to distance themselves from the speaker.
The activist Sara Rachdan had shouted that Israel was committing genocide in the Gaza Strip at the mass demonstration on Sunday. A spokesman for the organizers told dpa on Monday that she had grabbed the microphone without the approval of organizers.
Rachdan had been handed the microphone by Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg.
In a post on Instagram on Monday, Rachdan confirmed that she had not been invited to speak at the event and that event organizers had initially tried to stop her from gaining access to the speaker's area.
Thunberg gave her the opportunity to talk about the situation in the Gaza Strip, she said. At one point during her remarks, the microphone cut off.
Rachdan is currently doing her doctorate at the Faculty of Medicine in Amsterdam. She has been calling for protests against Israel on social media since the Middle East conflict escalated.
According to the police, around 85,000 people took part in the march in Amsterdam on Sunday, making it the largest climate change demonstration in the Netherlands.
Thunberg was among the official speakers for the demonstration and also expressed support for Palestinians amid the war in Gaza.
Wearing a keffiyeh - the traditional black and white Palestinian scarf - around her neck, she said that the climate protection movement had a duty to "listen to the voices of those who are being oppressed and those who are fighting for freedom and for justice." Thunberg also chanted several times: "No climate justice on occupied land." Activists from Germany's chapter of the Fridays for Future movement rebuffed Thunberg for those comments.
"We feel that Greta Thunberg's new statements confirm the course we have taken in recent weeks," the movement said on Monday, referring to its decision to distance itself from the Swedish activist who founded the movement.
"Fridays for Future in Germany acts as an independent organization and has long outgrown Greta as a person." The German climate organization's cooperation has been suspended at international level, the group added.
Source: Qatar Tribune
