Press conference – Statements against NATO and it’s The Hague summit next week

Today, a coalition of organisations held a press conference on Extinction Rebellion’s A12 blockade during the NATO summit. It took place over the A12 in The Hague, at the intersection of Theresiastraat and Prins Clauslaan. As international press was also present, they used English as the language of communication. Here are the speakers’ statements (also see the video below).

Haroon Raza

My name is Haroon Raza. I’m a criminal defence lawyer and long-time activist for Palestine and human rights. We are gathered here because we refuse to be silent in the face of genocide. What Israel is doing in Gaza is not a “conflict” – it is a systematic eradication of a people. Backed by Western complicity, NATO silence, and fossil-fueled imperialism, millions of Palestinians are being sacrificed for geopolitical gain. Racism and fascism go hand in hand with this violence. We see it in every government that dehumanizes the Palestinian people, justifies apartheid, and criminalizes solidarity. We demand an end to the genocide in Gaza. We demand an end to racist and fascist systems, from Palestine to The Hague. And we demand an end to the fossil economy that drives war, displacement, and destruction – globally.

Another world is not only possible – it is necessary. And it begins with truth and resistance.
Another world is not only possible – it is necessary. And it begins with truth and resistance.

Ode aux Rats

The rats of Ode aux Rats turn the tables on the Fast Fashion industry and let them smell the real stink of Fast Fashion. The Fast Fashion industry is destroying our earth, pumping the atmosphere full of greenhouse gases, wasting hundreds of trillions of litres of water, flooding the ocean with microplastics and exposing living beings to thousands of harmful chemicals. Stop this destruction. This deeply racist industry – where the people in the Global South get exploited so that we in the West can be made addicted to cheap clothing – has to stop. And the people making our clothes get, as we say in Dutch, “stank voor dank”. After wearing these clothes zero or more times we dump them again, flooding the Global South with waste, killing the people, destroying biodiversity.

We lab rats stand together with our fellow humans in the fight against the same evil roots that sprouted Fast Fashion. The fight against racism, against fascism, against colonialism, against capitalism, against fossil destruction, against genocide. Free Palestine! Free Congo! Free Sudan! Free Papua! Free Yemen!

Scientist Rebellion

I am professor Tjerk Oosterkamp, and I am joining the blockade on Wednesday. Despite its promise in 2009, our government fails miserably in stimulating renewable energy and getting rid of fossil subsidies. My physics colleagues and I are worried. We know the mathematics behind the complex systems that describe climate and weather. We have known for years what is coming at us: heat waves, droughts, storms, sea level rise, catastrophic economic downturns and societal instability. Misinformation by fossil fuels companies and intimidation of peaceful protest slow down the energy transition and climate adaptation. They don’t change the laws of physics.

Additionally, in the Netherlands alone 40 billion euro per year is handed out to large corporations to stimulate the use of fossil fuels rather than to stimulate the energy transition. 40 billion! One billion would be 50 euro per Dutch citizen. [Takes out 50 euro bill] Forty billion per year amounts to 2000 euro per person. [Takes out 2.000 euro] Every year! Not just in the Netherlands, but in many places, a large chunk of the taxes we pay is given to oligarchs and fossil industries. We demand from our government to finally take science seriously and stop fossil subsidies. Use my 2.000 euros wisely and everyone else’s too! Finally, I urge the mayor of the Hague to show how democracy can grow stronger by facilitating peaceful protests rather than hurting democracy by discrediting them.

Antifascist Antifastfashion

Fast fashion is the fourth largest fossil industry, but its crimes don’t stop at ecocide. It’s built upon colonialism, exploitation, slavery, child labour and at least two genocides. It’s estimated that twenty percent of all textiles in the world can be traced back to Uyghur concentration camps in China. China’s been committing a genocide on the Uyghur people for at least eleven years now. All of NATO’s members are trading partners of China; for all but five China is among the top ten largest trading partners. Shein and Temu ship their genocide merchandise to all corners of the world, welcomed by NATO member governments.

Inditex has publicly supported the Palestinian genocide, financially, politically and allegedly even with direct weapons supplies. Inditex ships their genocide merchandise to all corners of the world, welcomed by NATO member governments. The rise of fast fashion has lead to a horrible new status quo: for the common citizen, it’s become impossible to buy a single piece of clothing without contributing to ecocide and genocide. Fast fashion has become one of the worst tumors ever sprouted from the cancer we call capitalism. That’s why Antifascist Antifastfashion fully endorses the demands of the A12 blockade team: we need to stop genocide if we want to live. We need to stop fascism and racism if we want to live. We need to stop fossil destruction if we want to live. NATO members are in a position to stop all of this, yet continue to choose destruction over survival, profit over people, and fascism over peace and justice.

XRMuslims

I am a hopeful person, and I have a picture of the future that I am working towards. The genocide has ended, the Palestinians continue their well-earned reputation as the kindest people of the planet. The supporters of the ethno-state have their guilt, shame, and are ostracised. The destruction of the environment is being reversed, and the need for military alliances to attack the oppressed peoples of the world is gone. In short a kinder world. Thank you

Aslan Alioğlu from XRMuslims

ARALEZ

NATO militarism is a direct threat to humanity and stimulates mass extinction. The two percent NATO norm of spending on more warfare is frying the planet with increased unregulated emissions and other catastrophic pollution. But before they fry us, many already die. Because bombs don’t bring security; they scorch earth. Because government’s investments in militarism have already meant cuts in healthcare, public transport, housing and other essential sectors. Because NATO was founded by colonial powers, a fascist ruler and onboarded nazi’s into its ranks, we can not afford to be naive about the true face of NATO that brings death and destruction and wet dreams of full spectrum domination.

The USA is bankrupt, with an illegal debt of 36 trillion dollars – the last resort to rule is through military force. Over the past 75 years, the US contributed 21.9 trillion dollar to NATO’s defense budget according to its yearly Defense Expenditure of NATO Countries report – that is 9.259 dollars per second! They invested in death and destruction – and failed to pay their historic climate debt!

If you are not angry, you are not paying attention. Last week we saw more than five million demonstrators in the streets in more than two thousand cities across the United States protesting against fascist militarism. There is an intifada – an uprising – shaking off colonial powers worldwide. You are welcome to join. To survive as a species our rallying cry must be: Abolish NATO. All military budgets must be redirected to pay of the 400 trillion environmental debt owed to reorient towards multi species justice, rehabilitate colonized lands, restore Indigenous led cultures of land restoration, and build decolonial peace economies.

I am Chihiro Geuzebroek, cofounder of Stichting Aralez to advance decolonization.

Extinction Rebellion NL

When it comes to protecting life on earth, we cannot be present enough. When it comes to addressing racism, we cannot be loud enough. When it comes to protecting the world from climate catastrophe, we cannot be careful enough. The maintenance of fossil subsidies, the political support for Israel’s genocide on the Palestinians and the eager increase in NATO contributions make one thing clear. As long as people in the global South are victimised, as long as big companies profit, and as long as the world is made uninhabitable, troughs of public money and political support are widely available. We must stand up against this fossil culture of death.

We are happy to join our partners in the fight against destruction of what we hold dear. That is why next Wednesday we will call the government to account before the eyes of the world and will peacefully block the A12 until the three demands are met: stop genocide, stop racism and fascism, stop fossil destruction.

Haagse stadspartij

My name is Fatima Faid from the Haagse stadspartij.

I’m standing on the A12 today because I refuse to look away. While world leaders gather in The Hague – the city of peace and justice – to talk about ‘security’ within the NATO framework, billions are being spent on weapons, while people around the world suffer from poverty, climate collapse, and racism. What does security mean when your home is flooded, when you can’t afford to feed your children, when your identity or gender determines whether you survive? Climate justice is about far more than CO₂ – it’s about life, dignity, and the future. Military systems uphold global oppression: from the erasure of Indigenous peoples and femicide, to bombs that destroy ecosystems and further destabilize our climate.

The occupation of the A12 by XR is not a disruption, but a necessary wake-up call: when politics continues to fail on climate, peaceful resistance becomes the moral compass that reminds us of our responsibility to current and future generations. I stand in solidarity with everyone peacefully fighting for a liveable world. Not just for themselves, but for all of us. Because when politics fails, the voice of justice must rise – loud, visible, and impossible to ignore.

Wouter Mouton XR Belgium

Good afternoon everybody, thank you for being here! My name is Wouter, I’m here on behalf of XR Belgium to show our support and respect. The momentum is here for the Palestinian genocide, but I want to talk about the climate crisis. If we as humans want to keep going, we’ll have to do a better job in protecting the oceans, insects, ozon etcetera. According to science, we will reach the critical 1,5 degree limit in over four years, that’s 1.492 days. It’s a very realistic doomsday clock, and it’s ticking really loud. That’s the bad news. The good news is: We know the problem and we also know the solution. Less fossil fuels, more social laws based on nature and people and not on economical growth. The way to get it is asking, is pushing, it’s taking risks as vulnerable men and women. We stand up for climate victims, for our kids, for plants and animals. They need us.

BDS Nederland

BDS Netherlands calls on all NATO member states to immediately impose a full weapons embargo on Israel. The ongoing genocide in Gaza has resulted in the deaths of tens, likely hundreds of thousands of civilians, including children, and the destruction of critical infrastructure. This is not self-defense. This is the systematic annihilation of a people.

Israel’s actions, including the deliberate targeting of hospitals, schools, and refugee camps, violate international law and fuel regional instability through continued aggression against neighboring countries. NATO members cannot continue to supply arms that are used to commit atrocities. An embargo is not a political choice. It is a legal and moral obligation in the context of the genocide and of the illegal occupation and apartheid, as affirmed by the International Court of Justice. If NATO truly stands for democratic values like human rights and the rule of law, its members must act now. Stop arming apartheid. Stop enabling war crimes. Impose a full weapons embargo on Israel without delay.

Meld Islamofobie

I’m Rahma speaking on behalf of Report Islamophobia.

Zionism was born the belated child of European empire – a settler colonial project justified by racial supremacy, backed by Western capital and firepower. Today, its frontline is Gaza. Israel controls electricity, water, and life itself in Gaza – then cuts it off to sow death, brutally executing starving people while they seek flour to feed their families, daily, while starting wars of distraction across the region.

But NATO stands silent. Because Israel is a pillar of empire: what Nixon’s general once called “an American aircraft carrier in the oil-rich Middle East”. Fossil empire always coincided with landscapes of so-called terror. The figure of the muslim as terrorist stripped of humanity and made expendable to facilitate the westward flow of cheap oil. Now. To justify the repression of pro-Palestine solidarity ‘at home’.

From Gaza to Syria, Yemen to Iraq, NATO states have fueled destruction to defend fossil profits. European and US arms protect Israeli gas rigs and Gulf oil. Ecocide is fused with genocide. The struggle for Palestinian liberation is central to challenging imperial interests across the region. Understanding Palestine means understanding fossil capitalism and the fight for climate justice. Report Islamophobia participated in blocking this highway because there can be no business as usual when all efforts to open roads to Gaza to bring relief are blocked, while complicit war criminals pass here freely. Stop arming the genocide in Gaza. End the fossil fuel empire. End the global racial hierarchies that NATO is here to affirm. Free Palestine.

Jenny Rozema

My name is Jenny Rozema. My pronouns are she/they, or zij/hen in Dutch. I am an independent columnist and activist, currently mainly involved in transgender rights, and I am speaking in a personal capacity.

At the NATO summit, countries will try to express unity. Solidarity with one another. But if we, as the people, truly want to stand for solidarity between all people, then we need to fight the biggest and fastest-growing power that’s trying to destroy that from within. And that’s modern fascism. Because we are far past the point of modern fascists rising to power. They ARE in power.

Countries like the US and Hungary show us how quickly civil rights can be erased under fascist reign. And many other countries – including the Netherlands – are eagerly following their examples, by elevating far right politicians with the exact same ideology into power and systematically attacking the rights of the most marginalised groups. So many ideas and policies that just a few years ago we all called destructive, immoral, unthinkable, have now become essentially ubiquitous. And it’s already literally costing lives, by far most severely in the global south, but also already in the global north. Globally. With marginalised groups like people of colour, refugees, women, religious groups like muslims, people with disabilities and lgbtqia+ people being the first and worst affected.

If we want to stop the fascist seizure of power, before we tumble into an even deeper and much darker abyss, then we need to take mass action right now. All together as people and as groups, in solidarity against the powers that are trying to divide all of us and erase so many of us. That is why I’m expressing my support for this action. Because the time about which people will ask why more people didn’t try to do something is now. Never. Again. Is. Now.

Just Stop Fast Fashion

Dressed to kill – Fast Fashion rears it’s ugly head. Fast fashion is a fossil industry built on exploitation and excess, rooted in capitalist- and colonialist practices. Fashion brands exploit and abuse people and their environment, enforcing racist and colonial power dynamics. Part of the fast fashion textiles can be traced back to Uyghur concentration camps in China. Mass detention and surveillance, forced labor and forced assimilation aimed at erasing the Uyghur culture and identity. This is genocide.

Inditex brand Zara’s campaign “The Jacket’s Stain”, featured supermodels who, amidst the rubble, carry on their shoulders corpses wrapped in white cloths. Murdered Palestinians, wrapped in white and bloody cloth, symbol of the horrific crimes committed in Palestine. Fast Fashion accelerates the climate crisis through overproduction and overconsumption, massive waste, polluting land, water, and air. Fast Fashion Kills! I am enraged about the empty promises and lies, desperate about the future and deeply sad about everything that has already been murdered, eradicated, became extinct, vanished for ever.

I am Klaaske, activist for life and speaking on behalf of Just Stop Fast Fashion

Stop AECOP, the East African Crude Oil Pipeline!

This poem was originally written in support of the fight against the Dokata Acces Pipeline. Now, in solidarity with struggles against oil pipelines worldwide.

Stop AECOP, the East African Crude Oil Pipeline!

PIPELINE

Something is running through
the pipes
They say
It will make you thrive

The soil shivers
The river does not sing
but shrieks

Now who wants to dance
to the tune that sticks like
a white man’s profit?

The water shimmers
like black varnish
as the riches
flow over the grass

A father weeps
over land lost
A mother rises up

Live, children!
You will not win if you sit still

Stand up, you
buffalo’s and bellowing wind!

Begin
the battle against
the pipes!

Vertaling/bewering van Pijplijn

Joke Kaviaar

Beat the borders

Militarism and border control are two sides of the same coin. Those who profit from warfare, by arms production and trade, also profit from keeping out the refugees from war, climate disaster and repression, by also producing equipment for border militarisation. These companies have names, offices and factories. In the Netherlands they are Airbus and Thales. Let’s hold them accountable and stop their business.

BEAT THE BORDERS

Who is telling us where to go and
where to stay and who says NO to
questions asked, permits applied for
Who declared the immigrants war?

Who is standing in our way and
who is law and who is paid for
stamps to give, entrance denied to
those that tried to make it up here

Who makes money and has a say in
who gets locked up, has to pay
for being here or being there and
either way, nowhere is safe

So, who’s responsible, who is rich and
who is pulling strings, and which
politicians do not lie or cry them
crocodile tears when you die?

All they ever do is take
Turning people into slaves, turning slavery into profit
Turning profit into property
Into poverty for you and for me

There is no reason to obey
Living lives that lead to the grave
Let’s be standing in the way,
Make a difference, start today!

So, let’s take no orders
Let’s beat the borders
Let’s cross the lines
Let’s ignore the signs

Let’s take no orders
Let’s take their riches
Let’s beat the borders
and stop their business

Joke Kaviaar

Mapuche-Pewenche – Indigenous Liberation Movement

I cannot help but reflect on the implications of the NATO 12 Defense Critical Raw Materials List. This list reminds me of October 12, 1492 – a date that marks the beginning of an era defined by colonization and exploitation.

At COP16, nation-states proclaimed to make peace with nature, yet the release of the NATO Defense List reveals an alarming contradiction. You cannot claim to uphold the values of democracy and security while engaging in acts of colonialism. The resources you seek are not in your territories. Our sovereignty is non-negotiable. We, as Indigenous Peoples cover 32 percent of the world’s land. We protect 22 percent of the world’s key biodiversity areas.

Over 54 percent of Critical Raw Materials, crucial for your military Defense Agenda, are in Indigenous territories. You want Aluminum? Well. Indigenous Peoples from the global south, removed a multinational, to avoid exploitation of Bauxite, within a couple of days. Current African leadership removed France from Mali. Based on stipulations within international law.

The NATO 12 Defense Critical Raw Materials List cannot be executed without free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC). We have taken our demand for recognition of our rights into the courts, winning crucial legal victories and historical ruling in different continents. Indigenous Liberation Movement informed stakeholders as ING already in the stakeholders meeting. We continue with our advocacy to other stakeholders.

We, as Indigenous Peoples from the Global South, demand the establishment of Independent Indigenous Reviews of Environmental and Social Assessments (ENSIA) through a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), in every NATO’s Act, Treaty or principle. I urge all to learn the tools of the master to defend real security. To stand next to Indigenous Peoples.

Thank you.

Chautuileo Tranamil