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The United Nations Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC) in Copenhagen, also know as the fifteenth conference of parties (COP15), ended up Friday 18 December 2009 in a fiasco. Despite an explicit awareness of the urgency and magnitude of the crisis, months of preparations and two weeks of talks only led to the Copenhagen Accord, a non-binding, non-detailed, two and a half pages text brokered outside the UNFCCC negotiating process in the last days of the conference and pushed by a minority of powerful nations. Despite its name, this text hasn't been agreed or signed by delegates and some countries have already threatened to reject it. Our so-called 'leaders' failed their historic and vital responsibilities for addressing the climate crisis. Their (in)action also embodies a strong ethical dimension. In particular, they have condemned numerous vulnerable humans that are already severely impacted by the crisis. 300,000 people already die because of climate change and due to a lack of political will and adequate interventions.

However, not only COP15 ended up with such an abject sham but this summit, its organizers and most of its stakeholders, have literally wrecked democracy. Civil society observers had come from all around the world to monitor and advocate citizens' interests to national delegates within COP15, generally competing against business and industry associations and lobbies. Observers thus ensure basic transparency of the negotiation process and provide a crucial mechanism for advancing non-business interests through discussions with delegates. Despite its already very limited influence in the process, the UNFCCC further excluded civil society by progressively reducing the number of observers, excluding people and even entire organizations. During the last days of COP15, only 90 observers were allowed inside which illustrates how opaque, exclusive, and undemocratic the process enforced by the UNFCCC was.

Many citizens and activists had also planned to come to Denmark to participate to the alternative peoples' climate summit 'KlimaForum', to exchange and coordinate with other individuals and organizations, and to join demonstrations and actions in the streets. Claiming risks of riots, the Danish government engaged in massive preparations with legal, technological and logistical components. In November, despite widespread criticism, it passed a law giving considerable powers to the police. In particular, pre-emptive arrests were made legal on the basis of mere suspicion. In December, Denmark also reintroduced border checks at internal Schengen borders. Finally, the Danish police got prepared for the biggest operation of its history. It did some shopping, buying some new water canons and cages to build a temporary prison just for the summit. Those cages were criticized for not respecting UN standards for the treatment of detainees. These were the seeds of COP-enhagen.

In practice, activists were first prevented from entering Denmark. For those who reached Copenhagen, the police engaged in permanent and increasingly intensive harassment, controlling IDs, searching bags and bodies, raiding collective sleeping places. On December 12, during the largest environmental march in history, the police splitted an entire block apart from the demonstration and made 968 preventive arrests, most of which were completely arbitrary. After being held for hours outside, sitting on the floor in freezing temperatures, people were taken to the specially built climate jail (also tastefully nicknamed by policemen "Guantanamo junior"), locked-up in cages and sometimes pepper-sprayed inside cages. Almost all were freed with all charges dropped within 12 hours.

On December 16, insiders and outsiders to the COP15 process were planning to disrupt the official negotiations and gather to hold a people's assembly. The objective was to open a space for voices and alternatives that have remained marginalized in COP process. One day before this action, as the summit was clearly on very shaky grounds, undercover policemen abducted an action's spokesperson as he was coming out of the Bella Centre. The next day, inside the legalised demonstration going toward the Bella Centre, one activist was abducted by policemen disguised as protesters. Once insiders and outsiders attempted to walk respectively outside and inside the negotiations and gather peacefully, they were beaten up and tear-gased by the police. Many were arrested and some are now prosecuted for "shouting push" during the Reclaim Power action. Some are still in jail.

Despite the brutal repression and exclusion of citizens which has manifested totalitarian tendencies of the Danish state and the UNFCCC, Danish political parties, Danish parlementarians or foreign officials did not react. We thus really need YOU to act now! In the face of such ruthless attempts to silence and criminalize what is nothing else than civism, whether in the form of criticism of an undemocratic and failing COP process or through attempts to bring forward propositions and alternatives, we must take action now, not only to defend democracy, civil and human rights but also to defend the political space we will need to advance adequate solutions to address the climate crisis and climate justice.

There are a number of ways you can contribute:

• Support activists who are in jail and who are prosecuted.
• Help us to document what happened. This will help us to improve the website, raise a broad awareness about the repression and build a legal case. Send us your images, videos or links. Write a testimony about what happened to you.
• Protest by demonstrating in front of a Danish embassy or consulate near where you leave and by writing to the Danish ambassador in your country.
• Join the decentralized anti-repression COP network.
• Share any other relevant idea or initiative.
• Help this website grow. Blog it, facebook it, forward it; give it your ideas and some time if you can.