Climate activist Disha Ravi features on Guardian’s weekend magazine cover
She featured on the magazine cover days before the Glasgow Climate Change Conference (COP 26) is scheduled to begin in Glasgow on October 31.
FollowIn India's southern city of Bengaluru, Disha Ravi gained attention as she helped clean up lakes, plant trees and campaigned against plastic. Ravi grabbed national and international headlines as she was arrested in February on sedition charges over an online document or toolkit about the farmer protests.
The 22-year-old climate activist has now featured on The Guardian Weekend magazine cover. The magazine carried Ravi’s first-person account as part of a series titled: “Wrong side of the law. Right side of history: the activists arrested in the name of the planet.”
She featured on the magazine cover days before the Glasgow Climate Change Conference (COP 26) is scheduled to begin in Glasgow on October 31.
In a tweet, Ravi said: “I’m very honoured to be on the cover of the @guardian Weekend Magazine alongside 20 amazing people including @GeorgeMonbiot @Janefonda @orlamurphy_k @JackHarries @TedDanson and others who I can’t seem to find on Twitter.”
Ravi is a member of Greta Thunberg’s Fridays for Future movement for awareness over the climate crisis. Ravi co-founded the India branch of the FFF network and began organising strikes across the country.
She had already felt the impacts of climate change on her life. The city house she lived in with her mother, who raised her as a single parent, would flood every time it rained, getting worse every year and her home city of Bengaluru is due to run out of water in a matter of years. Her grandparents who were farmers had struggled with drought, crop failure and flooding as a result of global warming.
“When I was 18, I realised that this is the reality for millions in my country. The fact that it wasn’t front-page news was baffling,” she told the Guardian.
Ravi referred to the uproar after her arrest and expressed concern over what she called the suppression of activists and journalists. “People are being punished for what are essentially thought crimes,” she told the Guardian. She added she receives “death threats daily” and that she is used to it.
Ravi’s alleged crimes are related to a “toolkit” document connected to India’s ongoing farmer protests, which police say is evidence of a co-ordinated international conspiracy against India.
