Eye on the Amazon: Retaliation Trial Opens Against Victims of Chevron Contamination in Ecuador

Reposted from Eye on the Amazon



Today in New York Ecuadorian villagers from the Amazon rainforest region ravaged by Chevron's oil contamination were joined by supporters for a rally in Foley Square across from the courthouse where a trial opened in the California-based oil giant's retaliatory RICO lawsuit against the Ecuadorians and their U.S.-based legal advocates.

The Ecuadorians are representing 30,000 plaintiffs who won a landmark judgment against Chevron in an Ecuadorian court in 2011 in which the company was ordered to pay more than $18 billion for cleanup of widespread contamination, as well as compensatory and punitive damages. The case holding Chevron accountable for toxic dumping by its predecessor company, Texaco, has been upheld by appellate courts in Ecuador.

After nearly 20 years since the case was filed in 1993, Chevron still refuses to pay for a cleanup and is waging a scorched earth legal, PR, and lobbying campaign to crush its victims and their advocates and supporters. The oil giant stripped its assets from the country, forcing the Ecuadorians to pursue enforcement of the judgment in countries where the company maintains assets.

While Secoya indigenous community leader Javier Piaguaje continues to contest that the New York court can assert Personal Jurisdiction over him, he has traveled to New York to represent the tens of thousands of Ecuadorian plaintiffs who couldn't be there and defend them against Chevron's insulting allegations. He had this to say outside the courthouse in Foley Square today:

Ladies and gentlemen,


30,000 people were affected by Chevron's contamination and each day this number increases. Almost 30 years of criminal operation by the Chevron-Texaco oil company in Ecuador; more than 1,500 square miles of contaminated Amazonian rainforest; rising cases of cancer that almost always end in death; the suffering of our women for the great number of miscarriages; the devastation of the ecosystems and the destruction of thousands of species of plants and animals.


When Texaco arrived, we were expelled from our ancestral lands and two indigenous peoples went extinct. What the oil company brought to the Ecuadorian Amazonian was violence, death and destruction; meanwhile, the company got all the riches that the land offers at the cost of our lives, our health, and our home.


For this reason we continue our efforts to hold Chevron accountable, so that the company pays for all of the harm that it caused. We are here in New York now, where Chevron persecutes us and accuses us of being criminals and is supported by a judge who doesn't know our reality and suffering and hopes. Who are the real villains in this story?


We are outside this courthouse to tell the history that Judge Lewis Kaplan has refused to hear. Our misery is real and it will not cease to exist by a judicial process in New York, where Chevron hopes to avoid its responsibility with the collaboration of a judge that isn't even willing to validate the harm that we've had to endure. We come to denounce the abuse that is being committed in affected communities but also to tell them that we have already fought for 20 years and this RICO lawsuit will not stop us in our quest for justice.


The oil company has declared that it will fight us "until hell freezes over." Obviously our economic conditions are not the same; they can buy justice, we cannot. Because of this we must unite to fight against a giant that understands money, but not values like solidarity, truth, fellowship, and above all, justice.


Our fight is to keep the Amazon, the lungs of the planet, alive.


Our fight should interest the whole world.


We unite to make the world a place that is worth living in. The Amazon was one of those places. With your help, it can be again.


Thank you.

Forty-seven "named plaintiffs" – all of them indigenous rainforest residents and rural villagers – have been named in Chevron's lawsuit, which alleges that the entire case is a conspiracy to extort the company. Two of the Ecuadorian villagers, while rejecting the New York court's jurisdiction over them, have nonetheless appeared in the case in order to fight the allegations. Fearing a public backlash for suing victims of its pollution, Chevron has focused its smear campaign on New York-based human rights attorney Steven Donziger, who has advised the Ecuadorians in their efforts since first visiting the contaminated region in 1993.

The Ecuadorians and their supporters have called for an end to Chevron's retaliatory lawsuit, and are calling this latest effort a "rigged show trial" before a federal judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, who has displayed outright hostility to the Ecuadorians' legal efforts to demand a cleanup. Judge Kaplan has also made repeated disparaging on-the-record comments about Ecuador's judicial system.

Texaco operated in Ecuador until 1992, and Chevron absorbed the company in 2001, assuming all of its predecessor's assets and liabilities. Chevron has admitted to dumping nearly 16 billion gallons of toxic wastewater – the byproduct of oil drilling and pumping – into rivers and streams relied upon by thousands of people for drinking, bathing, and fishing. The company also abandoned hundreds of unlined, open waste pits filled with crude, sludge, and oil drilling chemicals throughout the inhabited rainforest region. In other countries at the same time as it was operating with no environmental controls in Ecuador, the company re-injected wastewater and used other easily-deployed technologies to deal with the toxic byproducts of its activities.

Multiple independent health studies have shown an epidemic of oil-related birth defects, cancers, and other illness. It is estimated that the contamination has directly led to at least 1,400 deaths.

More Information:

For more on the campaign to hold Chevron accountable for its abuses in Ecuador: ChevronToxico.com

For more on the impending trial in Chevron's retaliatory lawsuit: StevenDonziger.com

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Chevron’s Short Fuse: Is CEO Watson’s Skin Too Thin?

Looks like pressure from shareholder activists is getting to Chevron’s CEO John Watson, who has filed criminal trespassing charges against longtime Chevron critic Antonia Juhasz. You may recall Juhasz raised serious questions about Chevron’s policies related to Ecuador and other countries during a shareholder meeting this past May in Houston. Chevron summoned the Houston police to arrest Juhasz and four other critics, including Han Shan and Mitch Anderson from the environmental group Amazon Watch. Chevron also refused to allow about 20 people with legitimate proxies to attend the meeting. All 20 had traveled from various countries to raise questions about Chevron’s poor human rights practices.

Read the Marketwatch.com article below about Chevron’s decision to press charges against Juhasz, as well as this blog about reaction to Chevron’s latest strong-armed tactic to muzzle its critics. (Also see this press release about Chevron trying to hire a journalist to spy on people sick with cancer and other illnesses as a result of the oil contamination in Ecuador)

Watson might be thin-skinned about Ecuador because he was the architect of the merger between Chevron and Texaco. The merger is a potential disaster for Chevron given that the size of Texaco’s old Ecuador liability could surpass the $31 billion that Chevron paid for the company. Watson has continually failed to answer questions about this potential conflict of interest.

John Watson

By John Letzing, MarketWatch
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — As the nation’s second-largest oil company, Chevron Corp. is accustomed to a cavalcade of activists at its annual shareholder meetings.

But Chevron (CVX 80.88, +0.80, +1.00%) is working with authorities who are prosecuting a particular shareholder activist, who harangued executives at the annual meeting in Houston last May. Antonia Juhasz was removed from the meeting and then arrested outside, after blasting Chevron’s environmental record and starting a derisive chant, according to people at the meeting. The meeting wrapped shortly afterward.

Juhasz has been charged with criminal trespass and disrupting a meeting or procession, and now faces up to six months in jail. She said the charges are an overreaction and doesn’t accept them. Her attorney said they will fight them.

Juhasz’s prosecution may result in an odd instance of a shareholder activist being not just removed, but also arrested and prosecuted for trespass and disruption. It raises questions about the best way for firms to deal with activists who use small amounts of stock to get into annual meetings to make a public statement.

“This is very, very unusual,” says Sanjai Bhagat, a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder’s Leeds School of Business, when asked if he heard of shareholder activists being faced with jail time for actions at corporate events.

Chevron spokesman Morgan Crinklaw said in a statement that the company is “cooperating fully with the [Harris County, Texas] district attorney’s office as they move forward in their prosecution.”

Juhasz, who runs the energy program at San Francisco-based advocacy group Global Exchange, deferred questions about the shareholder meeting to her attorney, John Parras. Parras said he will argue that Juhasz did not disrupt the meeting, which could have continued after her turn at the microphone during a question-and-answer period. “The larger question is, can shareholders within a corporation use the process to make the corporation better or more responsive to their concerns,” he added.

The incident has led to the hobbling of one of the company’s most vocal critics. Juhasz said she now must limit what she says publicly about the company for fear of hindering her defense.

Chevron’s Crinklaw deferred some questions about the Juhasz case to the district attorney’s office of Harris County, Texas. George Flynn, a spokesman for the office, said the authority to dismiss criminal cases belongs solely to the district attorney’s office, though it “certainly takes the sentiments of the complainants into consideration in making any decision to proceed to trial.” A preliminary court date has been scheduled for Thursday.

‘Lives lost, wars fought’ and more

San Ramon, Calif.-based Chevron held its 2010 annual meeting far from its San Francisco Bay Area headquarters. It came at a tense time for the oil giant.

‘The larger question is, can shareholders within a corporation use the process to make the corporation better or more responsive to their concerns.’

The BP PLC (BP 39.24, -0.05, -0.13%) oil spill had begun only about a month earlier in the Gulf of Mexico, drawing greater scrutiny to the industry; meanwhile, a high-profile lawsuit was proceeding against Chevron in Ecuador, alleging the company was responsible for massive environmental damage. Chevron has denied the charges.

Four other protesters also were arrested outside of Chevron’s gathering and face trespassing charges, according to media reports at the time. But Juhasz was unique as a stockholder pulled from the meeting, the reports said. She says she owns 14 shares in the company, which were donated. Each charge against her is punishable by up to 180 days in county jail, though the sentences in the case would run concurrently if she is convicted, according to the Harris County district attorney’s office.

Juhasz stands out as a particularly active critic, who has co-authored exhaustive “alternative annual reports” for Chevron, detailing the “lives lost, wars fought, communities destroyed, environments decimated, livelihoods ruined and political voices silences” because of the company. Until recently, her program was called the Chevron program at Global Exchange, though it was recently renamed. Juhasz said the name change of the program is not related to her arrest. However, she pointed out that her day-to-day duties have been constricted by her status as a defendant. “I’m definitely being limited in my actions,” she commented.

Boston University Prof. James Post said he can’t recall a similar case where a shareholder activist had criminal charges filed against them: “A company almost never wins in a case like that.”

Companies are better off, Post suggested, when they allow critics to vent and then move on. “Corporate democracy can be an ugly thing,” he added.

The company does not have video footage of the shareholder meeting, according to Chevron’s Crinklaw. “When Ms. Juhasz disrupted the meeting, it was after she and other activists had already posed a series of questions to the chairman,” he said. “Her actions clearly show that she was not interested in what the company had to say, only making a disturbance.”

A person who attended the meeting, but declined to be identified due to a lack of authorization to speak to the press, said it seemed possible to continue the event following Juhasz’s expulsion. However, the person said the event could not likely have continued while she remained in the room.

Chevron has a legal history with its work in Ecuador. The company recently won the legal release of outtakes from a 2009 documentary about a lawsuit filed against it there.

At the shareholder meeting in Houston earlier this year, several media outlets reported arrests and disruptions at the event. In a statement issued on the same day, the company announced that stockholders were informed of Chevron’s “reliable operations and superior execution.”

John Letzing is a MarketWatch reporter based in San Francisco.

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Amazon Watch: Chevron Condemned for Human Rights Abuses, Activists Arrested

This press release was put out today by Amazon Watch. Read on:

Chevron Condemned for Human Rights Abuses, Ecuador Disaster at Annual Shareholder Meeting Today

Activists Arrested Inside and Outside Chevron's Meeting
Community Leaders Barred, Ejected from Annual Meeting for Exposing the Truth about Chevron

Amazon Watch
26 May 2010 - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Brianna Cayo-Cotter, Rainforest Action Network, 415-305-1943 or brianna [at] ran.org
Paul Paz y Miño at 510-773-4635 or paz [at] amazonwatch.org

Houston, TX – At Chevron's shareholder meeting today the company faced outrage for its continued lies, deception, silencing of critics, and human rights abuses. Concerned community leaders from several nations including Ecuador and Nigeria traveled from around the world yet were refused entry to Chevron's annual meeting.

One of the few community members allowed inside the shareholder meeting was Mariana Jimenez, a 71-year-old grandmother from Ecuador. She spoke directly to Chevron's CEO and Board and demanded an end to Chevron's lies about the massive oil contamination in Ecuador that is destroying her community in the Amazon rainforest.

"In 1976, I lost two young children. In 1979, one of my daughters became very sick with an unknown illness on her throat and lost her voice for three months. People are still getting sick every day. There are children born with birth defects. I want him [Watson] to take responsibility for the crime that his company committed in my country."

Rather than showing Ms. Jimenez and the 30,000 other Ecuadorean people the respect they deserve, Chevron CEO John Watson chose to mock the community's suffering and disingenuously claimed that, "My predecessor (former CEO David O'Reilly) showed great empathy and I will do the same."

"We don't need empathy from Chevron, we need them to accept full responsibility for the pain and suffering they have caused our people and clean up Ecuador now," said Guillermo Grafa, an Indigenous leader from Ecuador who was denied access to Chevron's shareholder meeting after traveling from his home in the rainforest.

Chevron's Board also felt the heat inside the shareholder meeting. During the Board re-election process, shareholders challenged Chevron's Board of Directors to intervene in the company's failed strategy of covering up its massive liability.

"While Chevron's management systematically deceives regulators, shareholders, and the public about its liability in Ecuador, the Board of Directors has been asleep at the wheel," said Maria Ramos, Change Chevron Campaign Director at Rainforest Action Network.

"Since taking the helm at Chevron, we have seen Mr. Watson continue to endorse this company's long running, expensive and dead-end strategy with respect to the dire situation in the Amazon -- a strategy which has cost both the company and the people of the Amazon dearly."

Meanwhile outside, Chevron arrested four shareholders and representatives who refused to leave Chevron property after they were denied access to the meeting. Those arrested were trying to voice their concerns about environmental destruction and human rights abuses in Ecuador, Richmond, CA, Houston, TX, and around the world. The people arrested were Han Shan and Mitchell Anderson of Amazon Watch; Juan Parras of TEJAS in Houston; Rev Ken Davis from Richmond. Antonia Juhasz of the True Cost of Chevron coalition was arrested while trying to make a statement inside the shareholder meeting after being admitted with a valid proxy. None of the arrested had been released as of 3:30 pm CT.

Amazon Watch staff Han Shan and Mitch Anderson participated in the "sit in" before their arrests. "More than 20,000 [Chevron] proxy shareholders have been barred from the meeting for no valid, legal or legitimate reason, but simply because they come from communities in Ecuador, in Burma, in Nigeria, in Richmond, CA like Rev. Davis here. And they want to deny those people speaking out about their concerns. It's appalling," said Han Shan. Mitch Anderson added, "We are not leaving the premises. They have disenfranchised our voices and they are going to have to drag us out of here."

Shelley Alpern, Vice-President at Trillium Asset Management Corporation was also outraged at Chevron's actions, stating, "I attend several shareholder meetings every year and I have never seen a company deny entry to legal proxy holders. This is outrageous and reflects very poorly on our company's respect for the laws that govern our proxy process. The shareholders in attendance today should stand forewarned not to say anything critical or it could be you next year."

More information at www.chevrontoxico.com.

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