STATEMENT FROM PRESIDENT FERHAT MEHENNI FOR THE 28th UN CLIMATE CONFERENCE – COP28

On Thursday November 30, the leader of the Kabyle independence movement, Mr. Ferhat Mehenni, spoke at the 16th Forum on Minority Issues organized by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, where he described the tragic situation of Kabylia under Algerian Arab-Islamic governance.
The pro-independence leader exposed the evils ravaging Kabylia as a result of the deliberate action of the racist and criminal Algerian state. In particular, Ferhat Mehenni described the monumental damage caused to Kabylia by forest fires, which have claimed hundreds of lives and ravaged the fauna and flora of the entire region (mountains, plains, sea coast… everything has been ravaged).
Nor did he fail to mention the endangerment, even deliberate poisoning, of the population, notably in Vgayet, by the exploitation of zinc and lead mines, using force against citizens who refused to allow their land to be poisoned… Not to mention the hundreds of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience, and the dozens of “death sentences” handed out like chocolate buns in an embargoed territory! Hence the overcrowded prisons, as expressed by the Kabyle leader at this UN assembly on the rights of “minority” peoples (with 12 million Kabyle after all).
It should be noted that at the end of his statement, Mr. Ferhat Mehenni was very generously applauded by the audience. The moderator of the assembly had to intervene to ask the audience not to applaud, as this is not the custom of the said assembly, which should, in theory, listen in silence and then make “reports”. No expression of satisfaction, or dissatisfaction, is supposed to be expressed by the audience. All participants in this kind of assembly know this. But the presentation and clarity of the situation of the Kabyle people under the administration of a veritable Arab-Islamic Gestapo drew applause from the audience, so much so that the presentation alone demonstrates the monstrosity of the Algerian state, just as it highlights its indisputably racial, and principally anti-Kabyle, policy.

STATEMENT FROM PRESIDENT FERHAT MEHENNI FOR THE 28th UN CLIMATE CONFERENCE – COP28 – On Thursday November 30 IN THE UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
Statement from Mr. Ferhat Mehenni,
President of the Provisional Government of Kabylia (Anavad) and the Movement for Self-Determination of Kabylia (MAK)
on the occasion of the 2023 UN Climate Change Conference and the 28th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP28)
[30 November to 12 December – Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE)]
Mr. President of COP 28,
On behalf of the Provisional Government of Kabylia (Anavad) and the Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylia (MAK), of both of which I am the President, I send you my compliments and congratulations on your appointment as President of COP28, to be held in Dubai from November 30 to December 12, 2023.
This annual conference, which seeks to limit greenhouse gas emissions and ultimately ban them by 2050, seems to focus primarily on those produced by fossil fuels.
I do not disagree with the eminent climatologists and other experts who are keeping a close eye on climate disruption and its catastrophic consequences for human life on every continent.
My concern, however, is to draw your attention, and that of the UN experts who will be working under your authority, to the not inconsiderable role played by fires and droughts in some areas and by torrential floods in others, with the simple and notorious “butterfly effect.”
I’m not talking about fires of natural origin. I’m talking about fires set by the Algerian colonial authorities, who every summer turn Kabylia into a furnace, a hell on earth, to punish the Kabyle people for aspiring to independence and opposing the exploitation of its mineral wealth (zinc and lead, among others), the natural deposit of which lies within the perimeter of one of the most beautiful and historic towns on the southern shore of the Mediterranean, the town of Vgayet (in Kabyle), known also as Bougie (in French) and Bejaïa (in Arabic).
On August 09, 2021, using drones, planes, and helicopters, the Algerian army bombed Kabylia with incendiary capsules containing phosphorus. Hundreds of thousands of hectares were burned, resulting in the deaths of over 500 people and the devastation of flora and fauna, not to mention the damage caused to housing, livestock, and the economy in general.
The crime has been committed again this year. Less than a month ago, the area around the coveted deposit was engulfed in flames for more than two months.
Mr. Chairman,
Arsonists are universally punished by law. But when these arsons are the work of a rogue state, we the victims have no international body to turn to.
By burning Kabylia, Algeria is burning all humanity. The effects of the chronic fires in Kabylia have an impact on the whole planet, far beyond the territory of Kabylia.
That is why I’m asking the COP28, over which you preside, to include among the means of combating climate change a duty of ecological interference with respect to rogue states like the one that is raging an environmental war against Kabylia out of racism.
In the hope that, thanks to your benevolent intervention, the small voice of Kabylia will at last be heard, allow me to express my warmest greetings to your Excellency Dr. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber.
Yours,
In Exile, 20/11/2023
Ferhat Mehenni,
President of the Provisional Government of Kabylia (Anavad) and the Movement for Self-Determination of Kabylia (MAK)
– The English version of this statement accompanies the French version –
[KAB/ANAVAD/MAK/UN/CCC/COP28/2023/11/20 – Original: French]
SIWEL 301544 NOV 23