He has been forced to surrender his passport. With the help of dozens of law firms, Chevron has ended Donziger’s legal career. And the Indigenous peoples, who have lived off the bounty of the rainforest for countless generations, now struggle for survival.ĪMY GOODMAN: Instead of cleaning up the Ecuadorian Amazon, Chevron has spent the past decade waging an unprecedented legal battle to avoid paying for the environmental damage, while also trying to take down the environmental lawyer Steven Donziger, who helped bring the landmark case. The result? Tens of thousands of people who live in what was once a paradise on Earth now face a horrific epidemic of cancer, birth defects, miscarriages and other oil-related illness. To increase its profit margin by a few dollars per barrel of oil, the company cut corners and used a populated rainforest ecosystem as its toxic dumping grounds. Over nearly 25 years in Ecuador, American oil giant Chevron, in the form of its predecessor company Texaco, engaged in reckless pump-and-dump oil operations that ravaged thousands of square miles of once-pristine Amazon rainforest. PETER COYOTE: Today, in an Amazon rainforest region of northeastern Ecuador called the Oriente, tens of thousands of men, women and children are surrounded on all sides by widespread oil contamination, the soil polluted, the water poisoned. This is part of a short video produced by the group and narrated by the actor Peter Coyote. Amazon Watch has spent years documenting the environmental destruction in Ecuador. But Chevron refused to pay or clean up the land. The landmark ruling was seen as a major victory for the environment and corporate accountability. The ruling came in a lawsuit brought on behalf of 30,000 Amazonian Indigenous people who had been suffering since the mid-’60s, when Texaco began drilling on their ancestral land. Ten years ago, Ecuador’s Supreme Court ordered Chevron to pay $18 billion for dumping over 70 billion liters of oil and toxic waste into the Amazon. We turn now to what’s been described as the Amazon’s Chernobyl - 1,700 square miles of land in the Ecuadorian Amazon devastated by decades of reckless oil drilling. “The real thing that’s going on here is Chevron is attempting to literally criminalize a human rights lawyer who beat them,” Paz y Miño says.ĪMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!,, The Quarantine Report. We also speak with Paul Paz y Miño, associate director at Amazon Watch, who says the new attorney general should conduct a review of the case and the dubious grounds for Donziger’s house arrest. “Chevron and its allies have used the judiciary to try to attack the very idea of corporate accountability and environmental justice work that leads to significant judgments,” Donziger says. Donziger, who has been on house arrest for nearly 600 days, says Chevron’s legal attacks on him are meant to silence critics and stop other lawsuits against the company for environmental damage. Instead of cleaning up the damage, Chevron has spent the past decade waging an unprecedented legal battle to avoid paying for the environmental destruction, while also trying to take down the environmental lawyer Steven Donziger, who helped bring the landmark case. Decades of reckless oil drilling by Chevron have destroyed 1,700 square miles of land in the Ecuadorian Amazon, but the company has refused to pay for the damage or clean up the land despite losing a lawsuit 10 years ago, when Ecuador’s Supreme Court ordered the oil giant to pay $18 billion on behalf of 30,000 Amazonian Indigenous people.
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