Indigenous Communities Take Chevron to Global Court for 'Crimes Against Humanity'

[Judi Lynn]

Published on Saturday, October 25, 2014

by Common Dreams

Indigenous Communities Take Chevron to Global Court for 'Crimes Against Humanity'

Impacted peoples urge International Criminal Court to investigate corporation's refusal clean its mess in the Ecuadorian Amazon

by Sarah Lazare, staff writer

Chevron's repeated refusal to clean up its toxic contamination of Ecuador's Amazon rainforest constitutes an "attack" on civilian populations and should be investigated by the International Criminal Court in the Hague, impacted indigenous and farming communities charged this week in a formal complaint (pdf) to the global body.

“In the context of international criminal law, the decisions made by Chevron’s CEO, John Watson, have deliberately maintained—and contributed to—the polluted environment in which the people of the Oriente region of Ecuador live and die every day,” states the complaint, which was submitted to the ICC's Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda on Thursday on behalf of approximately 80 affected communities, totaling tens of thousands of people.

In 2011, impacted communities won a judgment in an Ecuadorian court against Texaco (acquired by Chevron in 2001) for its toxic waste dumping in the Lago Agrio region in northeastern Ecuador between 1964 and 1992, which created an ongoing environmental and public health crisis, including high cancer rates and reported birth defects among residents. Last year, Ecuador's National Court of Justice upheld the verdict but cut the initial mandated payment from $18 billion to $9.5 billion.

Chevron has repeatedly refused to pay the $9.5 billion ordered by Ecuadorian courts and even took the step of removing most of its assets from Ecuador in an apparent effort to avoid paying. Petitioners slam what they call "multiple collateral attacks against the judgment and the lawyers who represented the affected communities."

More:
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/10/25/indigenous-communities-take-chevron-global-court-crimes-against-humanity.

[Dont call me Shirley]

1. Let's all send positive energy to the indigenous people. We were all indigenous at on time.

Chevron needs a severe punishment for their crimes.