Looking for Trouble

Indigenous communities urge Chevron to resolve ‘human and environmental tragedy’ in Ecuador

The latest slogan for oil giant Chevron is “We’re in the human energy business.” And Amazon Watch, representing indigenous people in rainforest communities in Ecuador, is happy to hear that. Atossa Soltani, executive director of Amazon Watch, recently wrote a letter to Chevron CEO John Watson, explaining why.

“I write to you on behalf of Amazon Watch to express our hope that as Chief Executive of Chevron Corporation you will have the fortitude and vision to genuinely address the most painful and immediate challenge facing your company – the Ecuador disaster.

Our hope is that you will not miss this critical opportunity to resolve the human and environmental tragedy in Ecuador and transform Chevron into the responsible 21st century energy company professed in ‘The Chevron Way’ and in your ‘Human Energy’ advertising campaigns.

Your company is currently facing a $27.3 billion financial liability in Ecuador. We ask that you reflect on Chevron’s handling of the Ecuador situation over the course of the last decade. You should remember Chevron’s Annual General Shareholder Meeting in April 2001 – on the eve of the Texaco acquisition – when I delivered to your company a binder, titled “El Dorado,” with more than 500 pages of comprehensive evidence documenting Texaco’s massive environmental contamination in the Ecuadorian Amazon. At that meeting, I warned Chevron that by acquiring Texaco the company would not only take on the moral responsibility of rectifying the tragedy in the Amazon, but also assume a very costly financial liability.

Despite increasing shareholder and analyst concern, the growing public demand that Chevron take responsibility for its actions in Ecuador, and the resulting multi-billion liability they have spawned, Amazon Watch has witnessed your company pursue an expensive, ethically questionable, and counterproductive policy with regard to the Ecuador case.

Mr. Watson, as you surely know, the situation on the ground is dire. Thousands of acres of once pristine rainforest have been devastated by oil pollution. More than 30,000 indigenous peoples and campesinos have been left without clean water to drink. Children play beside toxic waste pits.

Young women have been ravaged by stomach and uterine cancer due to poisoned water. As you are well aware, Texaco has admitted to having deliberately released 18 billion gallons of toxic wastewater into the waterways of the Ecuadorian Amazon, and to having left hundreds of abandoned unlined pits filled with crude oil and poison sludge over the course of more than two decades of oil operations. And now, as a direct result, a devastating public health crisis has consumed the region.

We are keenly attuned to Chevron’s public relations strategy with respect to this matter. The basic approach is to consistently blame the contamination of the Amazon on Petroecuador, Ecuador’s National Oil Company. Petroecuador’s poor record of environmental stewardship – largely because it has used an oil production system built by Texaco and designed to pollute – does not diminish Texaco’s responsibility for catastrophic contamination from 1964 to 1990. Texaco’s deliberate dumping dwarfs any subsequent pollution. Rather than continuing to shift the blame to Petruecuador, it is time for Chevron to assume the responsibility for Texaco’s legacy in Ecuador…”

Amazon Watch is a nonprofit group that works to protect the rainforest and advance the rights of indigenous people in the Amazon Basin. The group created this video showing people in the affected communities urging the Chevron CEO to do the right thing in Ecuador by cleaning up the rainforest contamination.

Amazon Watch has also set up a petition drive to support the rainforest communities’ demands for a clean-up, compensation for health and environmental impacts, and access to health care and potable water for all affected people.

You can sign the petition here: http://chevrontoxico.com/take-action/send-chevron-a-message.html

I first heard of this effort in an email from International Cry, a “free online magazine that provides news, videos, and urgent alerts centered on indigenous people and their struggles around the world to reclaim their lands, defend their traditions, enact their rights, and to quite literally survive.”

Both Amazon Watch and International Cry provide information you’ll seldom see elsewhere, and both groups need our support.

For more information, here is a link to a blog maintained by the team suing Chevron over its human rights problems in Ecuador and elsewhere: The Chevron Pit.

Non-citizen veterans facing deportation despite service to U.S.

Non-citizen veterans of Vietnam, both Gulf wars and Afghanistan are being “quietly” deported despite U.S. military promises of citizenship in exchange for fighting for the United States.

Reportedly there are over 3,000 veterans currently incarcerated and under threat of deportation nation wide.

Veterans’ rights activist Jan Ruhman wrote last year on the blog Vetspeak.org:

“American Military veterans who have served our nation in times of war and peace have quietly been deported since 1996 when the Immigration Reform Act (IRA) was passed by the Republican Controlled Congress and “broadly” redefined Aggravated Felony (AG) and took away certain applications for relief. This simple change in the definition of AG in the law has directly affected tens of thousands of veterans who served their nation. Quite simply, they are facing forced deportation or have in fact already been “quietly” and unceremoniously deported over the past 13 years.

“A trail of lies has been uncovered at point of recruitment and in boot camps. Statements concerning U. S. Citizenship being “automatic” were related by many veterans we interviewed. Other veterans, who were more educated, knew different and applied while in the military but then deployed to a combat zone and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) didn’t have their application follow them. Many, who knew they had to apply, simply found that (as is the case with many veterans upon discharge, especially those suffering from PTSD), navigating the “system” is not psychologically or emotionally possible, for them.

“At present, it is estimated that over 3,000 of our fellow veterans are incarcerated and face deportation in Department of Homeland Security/INS Prisons nation wide. They are being processed through court rooms in rented industrials parks that more closely resemble fast food franchises turning out lunch than justice. Many are being held under “mandatory detention” with no option to pay bail to be released while fighting their case.

“Each month the human misery and degradation suffered by these veterans, their families and loved ones continues to grow.”

Nicolas Taborek, a staff writer for the Imperial Valley Press reports on two of those veterans in California:

“After serving six years in the U.S. Marine Corps, Rohan Coombs assumed he had earned American citizenship.

“But today the Jamaican immigrant is one of several military veterans in custody at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in El Centro fighting to avoid deportation.

“Coombs, 42, moved to the United States with his mother when he was 14 and ended up at the facility after serving eight months in prison for a 2008 marijuana distribution conviction. About the time he was expecting to be released from prison, he received some surprising news: despite his military service during the first Gulf War, he was never granted U.S. citizenship. As a non-citizen, he was subject to removal from the country for his offense.

“All this time I was thinking I was a (U.S.) citizen,” Coombs said. “The only time I left this country is when I was in the military…”

“Another veteran detained in El Centro, Fernando Cervantes, 55, moved to the United States from Mexico when he was 7 years old and is facing deportation because he was convicted of possessing less than a gram of methamphetamine with intent to sell.”

Coombs and Cervantes, like many of the veterans being deported, say that the military told them they would automatically become citizens by serving in the armed forces.

Vets’ activist Ruhman, a veteran himself, urges people to contact their local congressional representatives to “demand justice for these patriots.” Ruhman calls the deportations a “failure of U.S. immigration policy” and believes that only a federal law can stop them.

Protesters continue fight to break Israeli blockade of Gaza

The morning email brought more news on activists who have been attempting to go to Gaza from Cairo to protest the Israeli blockade, which has been in effect since 2007 and has had a disastrous effect on the people living in Gaza.

Sara Roy, who teaches at Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, provides a good description of the Israeli blockade in the January 2009 issue of the London Review of Books:

“Israel’s siege has two fundamental goals. One is to ensure that the Palestinians there are seen merely as a humanitarian problem, beggars who have no political identity and therefore can have no political claims. The second is to foist Gaza onto Egypt. That is why the Israelis tolerate the hundreds of tunnels between Gaza and Egypt around which an informal but increasingly regulated commercial sector has begun to form. The overwhelming majority of Gazans are impoverished and officially 49.1 per cent are unemployed. In fact the prospect of steady employment is rapidly disappearing for the majority of the population.

“The Israeli government sealed all the ways into and out of Gaza. Food, medicine, fuel, parts for water and sanitation systems, fertiliser, plastic sheeting, phones, paper, glue, shoes and even teacups are no longer getting through in sufficient quantities or at all.”

A Democracy Now report Dec. 30th on the march can be seen here:

According to this morning’s news release from the Institute for Public Accuracy, a high-stakes standoff continues today in Cairo, where unprecedented protests have been taking place.

“On New Year’s Eve – shortly after the Egyptian government had prevented buses from taking them to Gaza – hundreds of people, including scores from the U.S., who were attempting to march in Cairo were kicked, punched and dragged into a holding area by plainclothes
Egyptian government forces,” the IPA release said.

Video of some of the arrests can be seen here.

The video was taken by IPA communications director, Sam Husseini, who has been blogging and posting videos about the protest at: http://husseini.posterous.com

The IPA said: “Beginning Dec. 27, 1,300 activists from over 40 countries had been in Cairo attempting to go to Gaza, which has been under siege. Israel has prevented free movement to or from Gaza on its border crossings and has prevented the Gaza port and airport from functioning.

“These 1,300 activists – roughly equal to the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza during the Israeli bombing last year (about 13 Israelis were also killed) – have been prevented by the Egyptian government from going to Gaza through the Rafah crossing in the south of Gaza.

“Protests in Cairo have been ongoing; one took place Monday in front of the Prosecutor’s Office, roughly the equivalent of the Justice Department. This protest included about 40 Egyptians and 40 internationals. On New Year’s Day, several hundred people protested in front of the Israeli embassy in Cairo; protests there are virtually unheard of – prohibited by the Egyptian authorities. During protests, people have almost always been penned into areas to prevent their being seen by the general public.”

Recently there have been people marching in protest worldwide over the crippling blockade, including hundreds of Israelis in Tel Aviv. But, so far, Israel has refused to lift its siege.

The IPA is a nonprofit organization that tries “to broaden public discourse… (and) promotes the inclusion of perspectives that widen the bounds of media discussion and enhance democratic debate.” The IPA provides a vital link between journalists and policy analysts and activists.