Chilean presidency at COP25 will be stained with the ecocidal and criminal policy of Piñera

It is also unpresentable that at an international summit, Minister Carolina Schmidt is now the representative of Sebastián Piñera, a president investigated for crimes against humanity and whose environmental policies are against the international advance on fighting the climate change implemented by the United Nations.

Santiago de Chile, November 27th, 2019 (Ecoceanos News) – In the midst of the massive social protest happening in Chile against the neoliberal model and the violation of human rights, the Chilean government announced Wednesday that President Sebastián Piñera will not travel to Europe to chair the Climate Change Summit, COP25, which takes place the first two weeks of December in Madrid.

María Jesús Martínez, spokeswoman for the Coordinator for the Defense of the Glaciers, affirmed that Piñera’s decision to be absent “from COP25 clearly responds to a desperate measure to avoid global repudiation against his government and the violation of human rights that until today are committed in Chile”.
The presidency of this world summit will continue to be lead by the Minister of the Environment, Carolina Schmidt Zaldívar, which is also criticized by environmental organizations.

María Jesús Martínez said that Piñera and Schmidt have a “clear political incoherence in relation to the socio-environmental and climate crisis: They did not confirm the commitment to reduce carbon emissions, they did not sign the Escazú agreement, and recently they propose to eliminate Environmental Impact Assessment for dam projects between 50 thousand and 300 thousand cubic meters regardless of the height of the wall, even dismissing the Environmental Bases Law”.

For his part, the lawyer Sergio Millamán, of the Mapuexpress.org Collective, notes that “Piñera was forced to quit Chile on hosting the COP25, now announces that he will not go to Madríd to preside over this international meeting. It is true that now or in a while more Piñera will be tried by the international courts for the violation of Human Rights. Then, it is also unpresentable that Minister Carolina Schmidt is now the representative of Piñera, a person investigated for crimes against humanity”.

Meanwhile, Juan Carlos Cárdenas, director of the Ecoceanos Centre, said that “the mobilized Chilean people gave a new diplomatic defeat to the repressive and ecocidal civic-military regime headed by Sebastián Piñera. There is nothing left of his opportunist and marketed attempt to become a false international political leader in the fight against the effects of climate change”.

For Ecocéanos «only social mobilization with a diverse and territorial leadership, will allow to advance in the democratization of the country through a Constituent Assembly that places in the center of the discussion, the elimination of the socially inequitable and environmentally destructive neoliberal system».
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