At least 12 protestors and one envoy was barred from entering the United Nations (UN) climate conference, with some demonstrators deported after being stopped at airports, pulled off trains and given paperwork to sign in languages they did not understand. Just one person, Zanna Vanrenterghem, Climate Action Network Europe’s climate ambition project coordinator, was allowed re-entry after the Belgian embassy intervened. She was in her vehicle on a direct train from Vienna when four border patrol officials entered her car and scanned her passport before telling her she was being denied entry to the country. She was taken to a border control facility where she was detained before calling the embassy for help.
Nugzar Kokhreidze, a member of the Georgian delegation, flew to Poland but was stopped at customs where he was told his name was on “a list of dangerous persons”.
He was then told if he challenged border controls he would be deported and banned from Poland for five years.
The threats to delegates and demonstrators are part of a new law passed by the Polish government earlier this year that saw unplanned protests banned and Polish authorities given the right to gather data on UN climate conference attendees, an event that has sparked revolts in the country in the past.
A march last week against climate change saw 65,000 protesters take part.
Chiara Liguori of Amnesty International blasted the actions of Polish border force, adding Poland is “committed to providing access to information, access to participation, and remedy on environmental matters, and so this is a clear breach of that, but also of general human rights obligations of freedom of expression and freedom of participation”.
She added: “This is really important in this time and climate, because we are in a moment when everybody needs to be heard.
“This is really about the future of everybody, and new restrictions are really against what needs to be done at the moment.”
A campaigner from Protect the Planet, a German non-governmental organisation, said heavily armed Polish police with tear gas canisters stood guard every few feet along the roads where the march had taken place.
The campaigner said: “I’ve never seen this amount of police at any demonstration in my life, and I’ve been in a lot of them.”
The climate change meeting concluded that the world is now completely off target in attempting to reduce global warming, which is now heading for a 3C rise instead of the previously predicted 1.5C.