December, 01 2021, 10:27am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Danka Katovich, CODEPINK National Organizer, Danaka@codepink.org
Ariel Gold, CODEPINK national co-director, Ariel@codepink.org
Over 40 Human Rights and Foreign Policy Organizations Call on Formula 1 Star Lewis Hamilton to Raise Human Rights Concerns at the Saudi Grand Prix
41 organizations representing millions of people around the world sent a joint letter to Formula 1 star Lewis Hamilton calling on him to use his invitation to speak with Saudi leaders at the Saudi Grand Prix to highlight human rights concerns. This race marks the first time Saudi Arabia has ever hosted a Formula 1 event. The organizations ask Hamilton to make demands in five specific issue areas: women's rights, labor rights, prisoners of conscience, the war in Yemen, and democracy.
WASHINGTON
41 organizations representing millions of people around the world sent a joint letter to Formula 1 star Lewis Hamilton calling on him to use his invitation to speak with Saudi leaders at the Saudi Grand Prix to highlight human rights concerns. This race marks the first time Saudi Arabia has ever hosted a Formula 1 event. The organizations ask Hamilton to make demands in five specific issue areas: women's rights, labor rights, prisoners of conscience, the war in Yemen, and democracy.
The letter thanks Hamilton for his recent call for scrutiny over Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses. Hamilton has been a vocal advocate for Black Lives Matter and has expressed concern for Bahraini torture victims when the sport traveled to Bahrain in the 2020 season.
Danaka Katovich, a national organizer with CODEPINK said "Lewis Hamilton has a unique opportunity. Miles away from the race, the Saudi military is carrying out a suffocating blockade on Yemen that is starving a child every 75 seconds. This event is intended to be a distraction from the Saudi government's war crimes, but if the star of the sport is calling direct attention to it, people won't be able to look away."
"Yours, and other Formula 1 driver's comfortable stay in Saudi Arabia will not be possible without the countless foreign laborers who are exploited in the Kingdom" the letter highlights the concerns about labor rights in Saudi Arabia. "Under the current system, many migrant workers, including domestic workers who are primarily women, are trapped with abusive employers, and can face arrest, deportation and bans if they leave their employers without their consent."
The organizations who have signed on are concerned about "sportwashing". "Saudi Arabia's dictatorship is trying to hide its brutal crimes behind a wave of sports-washing," said Sunjeev Bery, Executive Director of Freedom Forward, an organization that campaigns for human rights and democracy. "Lewis Hamilton and other courageous advocates for freedom have an opportunity to cut through the dictator's propaganda and stand together with the brave Saudi and Yemeni voices who are demanding freedom and peace."
The letter also highlights the experiences of Saudi women's rights activist Loujain AlHathloul, who was released from prison in February 2021 after being sentenced by a terrorism court for her activism. While detained she experienced torture and threats of violence. Her release comes with conditions as she remains on probation and is not allowed to leave Saudi Arabia for five years. "It is our sincere hope as a family that Mr. Hamilton considers the gravity of supporting a country like Saudi Arabia that imprisons and tortures its own citizens like my sister Loujain. Although she has been released from prison, she is far from free. Why is she forbidden from speaking out about her experiences in prison? We all know what they want to hide. It is through Mr. Hamilton's advocacy that we can apply pressure to demand the truth and continue to send a message to Saudi Arabia that they cannot sports-wash their continued human rights violations away," said Lina AlHathloul.
Read the full letter here.
Signatories:
#FreeLoujain
Action Corps
ADDICTED To WAR
Alliance for Global Justice
ALQST for Human Rights
Arab Organisation for Human Rights in the UK
Arise: A Festival of Left Ideas
Avaaz
Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy
Campaign Against Arms Trade
Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia , CDHR
Chicago Area Peace Action
Chicago Committee Against War & Racism
CIVICUS
CODEPINK
DAWN
European Centre for Democracy and Human Rights (ECDHR)
FairSquare
Freedom First
Freedom Forward
Green Party Peace Action Committee
Gulf Centre for Human Rights
Hands Off Yemen
Indiana Center for Middle East Peace
Interfaith Peace Network of WNY
International Service for Human Rights
Just Foreign Policy
Labour Outlook
London Students for Yemen
MENA Rights Group
On Earth Peace
Peaceworkers
Project Break the Cycle
RootsAction.org
Stop the War Coalition
Veterans For Peace
West Suburban Peace Coalition
Women's March Global
World BEYOND War
Yemen Relief and Reconstruction Foundation
Yemeni Liberation Movement
CODEPINK is a women-led grassroots organization working to end U.S. wars and militarism, support peace and human rights initiatives, and redirect our tax dollars into healthcare, education, green jobs and other life-affirming programs.
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300+ Groups Appeal to US at COP28: End All Support of LNG
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With less than a week left of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, more than 300 groups from over 40 countries on Friday urged the Biden administration to end the permitting of new liquefied natural gas terminals in the United States and cut off diplomatic and financial support for LNG projects abroad.
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Oil Change International global policy manager Romain Ioualalen—whose group is part of the coalition—noted in a statement Friday that the latest draft COP28 agreement "shows we have never been closer to an agreement on a fossil fuel phaseout. But, what that transition will look like will be a fierce battle over the next few days."
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U.S. forces held joint military drills within Guyanese airspace on Thursday as a longstanding and intensifying territorial dispute between Venezuela and Guyana sparked fears of war in South America.
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On Sunday, 95% of Venezuelan voters approved a referendum in support of declaring ownership over the disputed territory, and President Nicolás Maduro swiftly "ordered the state oil company to issue licenses for extracting crude in the region," AFPreported.
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Irfaan Ali, Guyana's president, called Maduro's moves a "direct threat" and said his country's military forces are on alert.
"Our first line of defense is diplomacy," Ali said in an interview with CBS News on Wednesday. "But we are also preparing for the worst-case scenario... We are preparing with our allies, with our friends, to ensure that we are in a position to defend what is ours."
The United Nations Security Council was scheduled to hold an emergency closed-door meeting on the dispute on Friday at Guyana's request.
"Washington does not have the appetite to deepen its conflict with Venezuela. But ExxonMobil does."
The primary target of Maduro's ultimatum to companies was ExxonMobil, a U.S.-based fossil fuel giant that has made major new oil discoveries in the disputed territory this year. Exxon announced its first oil discovery in Guyana in 2015, and the country's government gave the oil behemoth a green light to drill in disputed waters.
Citing an industry analyst, The Houston Chroniclereported earlier this week that "the roughly 380,000 barrels per day that Exxon produces in Guyana account for roughly 10% of its 4 million barrels per day globally."
"The company plans to expand its production there to more than 1 million barrels per day by the end of the decade," the Chronicle noted.
Escalating tensions over Essequibo have sparked warnings of a possible military conflict in the region. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said Thursday that "if there's one thing we don't want here in South America, it's war."
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Brazil shares a border with both Venezuela and Guyana. The BBCreported that Brazil deployed troops to its border with Venezuela following Sunday's referendum vote.
On the same day as Lula's remarks, American forces held joint military drills with Guyana that the U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) said were part of "routine engagement" aimed at enhancing the two nations' "security partnership."
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Vladimir Padrino Lopez, Venezuela's defense minister, called the drills an "unfortunate provocation" aimed at protecting the interests of ExxonMobil.
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The last time that levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide were as high as they are today, Greenland was free of ice and the savanna and grassland ecosystems where humans evolved didn't exist yet.
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"It really brings it home to us that what we are doing is very, very unusual in Earth's history," lead author Baerbel Hoenisch of the Columbia Climate School's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory toldAgence France-Presse.
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By burning fossil fuels and clearing natural carbon sinks like forests, industrial capitalism has raised global carbon dioxide levels to 419 parts per million (ppm) today from around 280 ppm at the beginning of the industrial revolution.
"Rising atmospheric CO2 is the most obvious and startling expressions of our impact on the global environment," study corresponding author and University of Utah geologist Gabe Bowen wrote on social media. "The concentration has risen by ~50% in the past 100 years. Every year is now marked by the highest CO2 levels *ever observed* by humans!"
To understand how such a spike in carbon dioxide might impact Earth's climate and ecosystems, it's helpful to look at the past. This presents challenges, however, because the most reliable record of past carbon dioxide concentrations—gas bubbles preserved in ice cores—only goes back to around 800,000 years ago, when atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide were still at around preindustrial levels.
"Once you lose the ice cores, you lose direct evidence. You no longer have samples of atmospheric gas that you can analyze," Bowen said in a University of Utah press release. "So you have to rely on indirect evidence, what we call proxies. And those proxies are tough to work with because they are indirect."
Proxies are evidence in the geologic record that can stand in for carbon dioxide levels, such as mineral isotopes or the shape of fossilized leaves. Scientists have looked at these proxies before, but the current study represents the most comprehensive effort to date. A team of around 90 researchers from 16 countries spent seven years synthesizing and reviewing previous work under the banner of the Cenozoic CO2 Proxy Integration Project, according to the University of Utah and AFP.
The new study represents the scientific consensus on the carbon dioxide record, and it concludes that the last time carbon dioxide levels were around 419 ppm was 14 million years ago. That's much earlier than previous estimates of 3 to 5 million years ago.
However, the record goes back further than that to the Cenozoic Era, when the dinosaurs died and mammals began to emerge.
That record revealed a very clear pattern, Bowen tweeted: "CO2 goes up, the world warms. CO2 down, and things get icy."
The record enabled the scientists to predict the consequences of current and projected carbon dioxide levels.
"This is an incredibly important synthesis and has implications for future climate change as well, particularly the key processes and components of the Earth system that we need to understand to project the speed and magnitude of climate change," University of Utah biology professor William Anderegg said in the press release.
One of the report's messages, Bowen tweeted is that "the future is now."
"We've already pushed the atmosphere way beyond anything we've seen as a species," Bowen continued, "and if it stays this way we're in for big changes in the environment we live in."
If policy-makers don't restrict the burning of fossil fuels, atmospheric carbon dioxide could reach 600 to 800 ppm by 2100, AFP reported. According to the record, the last time levels were this high was 30 to 40 million years ago, when Antarctica was also ice-free and the Earth was home to giant insects.
Even today's concentrations are bound to have lasting consequences. For example, when carbon dioxide levels rapidly increased around 56 million years ago, it significantly altered ecosystems and took around 150,000 years to decrease again.
"We are in this for a very long time," Hoenisch told AFP, "unless we sequester carbon dioxide, take it out of the atmosphere, and we stop our emissions sometime soon."
However, the that doesn't mean the most extreme changes are locked-in. Instead, Bowen tweeted that the report was a "call to action."
"The geological changes we studied lasted for thousands and millions of years," Bowen said, "and if human-induced CO2 change is short-lived it won't have as big an impact on the climate."
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