By Ruth Jarman, Co-founder of Operation Noah 

For six weeks, the Tanzanian government has interrogated, detained and harassed 10 GreenFaith volunteers for their opposition to the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) – a pipeline which will have a devastating impact on the people and ecology of the areas it runs through, needlessly locking East Africa into a fossil fuel system that the world must quickly abandon.

In response, people of diverse faiths held a global interfaith fast earlier this month to show solidarity with the protestors and to draw attention to this human rights violation.

TotalEnergies, the French multinational behind the EACOP project, held its Annual General Meeting on Friday 24th May, and a few of us at Operation Noah joined the fast on this day to show solidarity with the Tanzania Ten and to demand an immediate halt to EACOP.

We could choose an alternative form of fasting, if, for example, fasting from food and/or drink was impossible or difficult (e.g., one could fast from the internet, carbon, etc); however, I fasted from food, but allowed myself all types of drinks, as fasting from coffee would perhaps have been more of a sacrifice!

Even fasting from food was hard yet it was wonderful to feel that I was fasting in conjunction with people of different faiths all over the world and in solidarity with the brave GreenFaith workers. It helped me to think and pray for them, as well as to pray for the board and shareholders of Total who were meeting on the day of my fast. It also helped me to be grateful for the relative freedoms that we still have in this country to protest. 

Still, in this country, as elsewhere, we must ask, ‘what can we do to bring about climate justice?’ The injustice of climate change is so inconceivably huge – geographically, generationally, racially, economically. It includes global-scale destabilisation of the life-support systems of the earth as well as the harassment, prosecution, detention and sometimes killing of those brave enough to stand in its way. And I am one in eight billion people, without any extraordinary power.

Cornel West said that ‘justice is what love looks like in public’ – a quote which reminds me of what Jesus says in John 15:12: ‘My command is this: love each other as I have loved you.’ 

The love to which we are called isn’t about being nice to people. It must take us beyond convenience, comfort and how our culture expects us to behave. We must be willing – happy even – to make sacrifices for this love. Just as Jesus’ love crashed through the boundary between life and death, our love must be free to crash through the limits of convention, expectation and societal norms as we do what we can to stop the injustice. 

I did not used to be the sort of person who signed petitions, let alone the sort of person who took to the streets. But my understanding of God’s love for the earth has changed me. 

So we must do what we can to stop the injustice, but we must also respond with compassion, in solidarity with the victims of injustice, which is why I took part in the recent interfaith fast. 

You can find out more about the Tanzanian Ten and sign an open letter in support of them here.