2020: #Chevron is refusing to pay for the '#Amazon #Chernobyl' – we can fight back with citizen action

The lawyer challenging the oil company’s #ToxicWaste dump in #Ecuador is under house arrest. We need a boycott

by Alec Baldwin and Paul Paz y Miño

"In 2001, #Chevron acquired #Texaco, including all of its assets and civil liabilities. One of those liabilities was the “Amazon Chernobyl”, a 1,700-square-mile #EnvironmentalDisaster in Ecuador that Texaco created through a disregard – and an attitude that local #Indigenous groups have called racism – for the health of the region’s peoples. Texaco, the sole operator of the fields from 1964 to 1992, eventually admitted that it deliberately discharged 72bn litres of #toxic water into the environment, which ended up in the #water supply, and gouged 1,000 unlined waste pits out of the jungle floor. According to several Indigenous witnesses, including Humberto Piaguaje, a leader of the Ecuadorean #Secoya people, the company actually claimed that the oil wastes were medicinal and 'full of vitamins'.

"Studies have shown thousands of excess cases of cancer deaths and other health problems in the region.

"Chevron insists that Texaco is only responsible for a portion of the damage, has 'already cleaned up its share' and attributes any remaining pollution to Ecuador’s state-owned national oil company. The government of Ecuador has been clear, in turn, that Chevron is liable for all of the damage."

#PeopleNotProfits #Pollution #ToxicWaste #EnvironmentalPollution #EnvironmentalRacism #OilPollution

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/17/chevron-amazon-oil-toxic-waste-dump-ecuador-boycott

"The Ceibo Alliance (Ceibo) is an indigenous-led Ecuadorian non-profit organization comprised of members of the #Kofan, #Siona, #Secoya and #Waorani peoples, who, in partnership with #AmazonFrontlines, is creating a model of #indigenous resistance and international solidarity rooted in the defense of indigenous territory, cultural survival, and the building of viable solutions-based alternatives to rainforest destruction."
https://www.amazonfrontlines.org/who/partners/

#amazonas #amazon