Help to Shift the Power in Ukraine

We are posting a message sent to us by a GPS organizer from Ukraine about the recent unrest and a plea to help Ukrainian people protect their freedom and basic human rights. 

Dear 350 team!

As you know, people of Ukraine have been struggling on Euromaidan for democracy, human rights and freedom of speech for almost 3 months. The situation became critical 3 days ago, when Ukrainian so-called government began to use weapons against protesters, among which are our family members, friends and all our environmental NGO partners and funds. 5 protesters are reported dead from tortures and shot by snipers yesterday.

Photo: Riot police posing for a group photo after scattering the protesters in Kyiv, Ukraine. Courtesy – Reuters. Riot police posing for a group photo after scattering the protesters in Kyiv, Ukraine

Our “government” are issuing one by one anti-constitutional laws against press, NGO’s and activists almost every day. If all these laws stay in force, the activities of climate, environmental and social organisations in Ukraine (and wearing helmets or polar bear hats in the street as well) will become nearly illegal or impossible.  

Apparently, main sponsors of the ruling political party in Ukraine (Mr. Akhmetov, Mr. Klyuev) are stakeholders of  our energy sector (DTEK and Metinvest). Their official plan is to grow coal industry by 40% until 2030 and to extract shale gas in Ukraine, confronting the European energy strategy, publicly agreed on before.

All this time we were successfully using everything we have learned on Power Shifts before about peaceful protests organizing and empowering people, but now it is not enough. Today appeared a serious threat that all communications – internet and mobile – will be turned down, before the final violent extrusion of #euromaidan by so called government. The voice of foreign press and activists could become the only source of information about the situation in Ukraine. We ask you for advice and support.

Here are our ideas on what can be done and how you could help.

1. Picketing of Ukrainian embassies and oligarchs houses in Europe and USA, who are sponsoring violation against Ukrainian people. Here are the addresses. Search for actions planned near you.

2. Donate to support medical, food and other needs of resistance movement in Ukraine.

3. Spread information about situation in Ukraine as wide as possible.

4. Brainstorm with us and help to figure out the way out of this hell together.

5. Call for freezing assets of Ukrainian oligarchs.

 

The roof is on fire!

Yours,

climate organizer from Ukraine

(name is not disclosed for safety reasons).

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For more information in English please visit this stream or this Facebook page