Thousands protest over climate change, Ethiopia and Myanmar at G7 summit

Supporters of Extinction Rebellion walked through the town of Falmouth.
G7 Summit
PA Wire
Isobel Frodsham12 June 2021

Thousands of protesters have marched through the streets of Cornwall on day two of the G7 summit as leaders of the world’s richest nations gathered to discuss coronavirus and other key issues.

Members and supporters of Extinction Rebellion walked through the town of Falmouth playing drums, chanting and displaying artwork campaigning against the use of fossil fuels, during their second day of protests.

Separately, more than 1,000 people protested against the crisis in the Ethiopian region of Tigray while thousands also gathered to raise awareness of the coup d’etat by the military in Myanmar

Several of the protest groups gathered in Church Street Car Park – around 500 metres from the media base of the G7 – where they held rallies and chanted passionately before parading past the centre.

G7 Summit
PA Wire

Ethiopian protesters were heard shouting “(Prime Minister of Ethiopia) Abiy is a criminal”, “G7 act now” and “Stop Abiy’s war crimes” at their rally.

They held up banners and the flag of Tigray before setting off a smoke flare.

Athy Mruz, 41, was one of the organisers of the Ethiopian rally and is a member of campaign group Tigray Youth Network.

“The G7 has a meeting today and we are demanding they take action against our unelected prime minister who is committing genocide upon the Tigrayan people,” she told PA.

“We no longer are OK with them simply condemning it, we want them to actually take action as we estimate over 150,000 people have been killed while over 15,000 women have been raped. There’s starvation and displacement for millions of people. We can’t wait any more.

“This is not a famine – this is not happening because Tigray is poor, it is man-made. It is being conducted, plotted and orchestrated by our unelected prime minister over the past seven months. This is a humanitarian issue, not a political issues.”

She added people from all over the UK had turned up for the protest and they were “proud” and “amazed” by the support they have received.

Tensions have been in place between Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and leaders of Tigray since November.

A United Nations-backed study released on Thursday said 353,000 people in the region were living in “severe crisis”.

G7 Summit
PA Wire

The Ethiopian government disputes the finding and has said aid is getting through.

Meanwhile, the Myanmar demonstrators sang songs and held up banners and posters which read “End human rights abuses in Myanmar” and “G7 nations strike down the reign of terror in Myanmar”.

Their protest is in response to Myanmar’s army seizing control of the country on February 1 after Aung San Suu Kyi was re-elected as leader in November.

Members from the campaign group Global Justice Now also gathered in Falmouth to protest against the uneven vaccine distribution across the world.

They wore hazmat suits and posed with a 6ft high mock vaccine which contained names of the pharmaceutical companies which are developing the vaccines.

Nick Dearden, 46, director of Global Justice Now, told the PA news agency: “The G7 have the power to stop the blocking of the proposal from the developing countries to waive patents on vaccines and allow countries around the world to produce them.

“That would massively ramp up the capacity of vaccines and bring an end to this awful vaccine inequality we’ve seen over the last year. Our country will be able to vaccinate everyone by the end of the year but on current rates, low income countries will take 57 years to vaccinate their populations.”

In response to the G7 leaders’ promise this weekend to donate millions of vaccines to poorer nations, Mr Dearden said it was “nowhere near enough”.

“Their donations would only vaccinate 10% of the unvaccinated population of the world,” he added.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in