Egypt, host of the UN climate summit, persecutes its own greens

up the holy mount seemed innocuous enough. On the side of the ’s annual climate conference this week in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula, a few dozen religious leaders from India to Indiana planned to pray on its summit for forgiveness for the harm humanity has been inflicting on Mother Earth. Egypt’s local military governor gave the idea a cautious welcome, hoping it might boost tourism. But his masters in Cairo were taking no chances. The bus companies and hotels were told to cancel their reservations. Security men grabbed the local fixer, took his phone and sifted it for names to put on the state’s blacklist. “They want to control us,” says an organiser, who has moved the Earth-propitiating event to London instead.As climate pundits and politicians fly into the Sinai resort of Sharm el-Sheikh from all over the world to attend , Egypt’s rulers are intent on cordoning off their own environment from the debate. They have sharply restricted permits for Egyptian s, installed cameras in taxis to quieten Egypt’s talkative drivers, and swamped the floor of the supposedly-controlled zone with plain-clothes security men wearing lapel pins. And across the country they have activists seeking to hold the authorities to account for wrecking Egypt’s environment.