Citizens have been on the streets blaming the paper industry, the government and the fossil industry for killing 7 people and destroying homes and land by deforesting, driving climate change and abandoning people.
***
This Sunday hundreds of people in 14 towns joined the protest “The country is burning. We must wake up”, a demonstration against “the social, climatic and political catastrophe that a country permanently at risk from flames represents”, called by a group of citizens whose only chance to fight for their life “is through social mobilization and to stop consenting to this destruction which, year after year, is repeated in Portugal”.
On the day that 3 more people were killed by smoke and flames, Climáximo supporters covered The Navigator pulp company’s headquarters with posters reading “Who killed the people in Albergaria-a-Velha?” and “Governments and CEOs killed people yesterday. Will you consent or will you resist?”. In the collective’s statement, they explain that “pulp companies continue to profit from the expansion of eucalyptus, the destruction of native forests and hiding their greenhouse gas emissions. In the hottest summer on record, the current plans by governments and companies like Navigator to increase greenhouse gas emissions and continue to sell off the interior of our country to the paper industry are a violent crime. These fires are the climate crisis hitting Portugal in real time.”
On the day of mourning for the victims of the fires in Portugal, two supporters of the climate justice collective painted Navigator’s headquarters and blocked it with their bodies, holding placards that read “Arson by government and companies”. “This week’s seven deaths cannot be considered merely the result of negligence. They are the direct result of a coordinated offensive between the state, the pulp industry and the fossil industry to turn the interior of our country into an incineration chamber,” says Alice Gato, a 22-year-old student, one of the people who sat in protest outside Navigator’s headquarters and got detained for several hours.
Mariana Rodrigues, a 29-year-old worker and the other protest participants said: “We are mourning the 7 people who died in this week’s fires, and we are fighting so that the government and Navigator don’t continue to kill. This fire was set by the governments and companies that caused the climate crisis, but it wasn’t them who fought the flames: it was ordinary people, protecting themselves and others from the destruction they didn’t cause. It has to be us, the people, to stop the social and climate collapse they are leading us towards. We need to stop the war they are perpetuating against people.”