Licypriya Kangujam is an 8-year-old “climate activist” from India. According to Kangujam, her activism began about a month before Greta Thunberg and she wants credit for that.
Some people even refer to her as the “Greta of India” and Kangujam is not flattered by that at all.
“Dear Media, Stop calling me ‘Greta of India’,” the 8-year-old activist wrote early last week along with a video of her holding a climate change sign that has amassed nearly 2 million views. “I am not doing my activism to looks like Greta Thunberg. Yes, she is one of our Inspiration & great influencer. We have common goal but I have my own identity, story. I began my movement since July 2018 even before Greta was started.”
“I first raised my voice to world leaders in Mongolia in an UN event in July 4, 2018,” she continued. “Since then I started my movement called ‘Child Movement’. In Hindi, we called it ‘Bachpan Andolan’ to call our world leaders to take immediate climate action. As I felt my work is more important than the organisation, I have less publicity and media coverage. Only media came to notice me when I spend a week in front of the Parliament House of India on July 21, 2019. Before that also, I began my Parliament Movement since Feb. 2, 2019.”
“I even dropped out my school since February 2019 (before Grade 1 final exam) when I was just 7 years old due to my protests every week in front of the Parliament House of India,” she noted, an action similar to that of Thunberg. “I sacrificed so much of my life in this tender age is not to called me ‘Greta of India’.”
“If you call me ‘Greta of India’, you are not covering my story. You are deleting a story.”
She then retaliated with this tweet:
“Dear [Twitter], WE ARE UNSTOPPABLE. “Finally my account has been restored after global pressure. Thanks everyone who supported me. This is possible because of all your love. Special thanks to all my Climate Activist friends across the globe. No words to express my feelings.”
Twitter, however, says that her temporary suspension had nothing to do with her comments about Greta but, rather, their policies on the age of users.
“Licypriya’s parents said that an email from Twitter suggested they needed to update the account to ‘explicitly state’ they are the ones running the account,” BuzzFeed News reports. “According to Twitter’s rules, you have to be at least 13 years old to set up and manage your own account if you have parental consent.”
“They will restore the account but ‘the bio needs to be updated to explicitly state that the account is run by the parents? This is to further prevent suspensions in the future as manage by Team Licy is a bit vague and doesn’t necessarily imply that a parent or legal guardian is the curator,’” the outlet reports.
