Resisting Chevron

So now the U.S. has become a nation of people driving around in gas-guzzling vehicles listening to the radio and cursing the evildoers at BP.  The addicts are cursing their dealer on their way to their next fill-up.

I sat for a coffee (another of my addictions) with one of my heroes, Antonia Juhasz, a longtime activist on oil issues.  Antonia quickly jumped into the fray on the Gulf disaster, to help people understand the bigger picture.  When she showed up in Houston a week ago for the Chevron shareholders’ meeting (legally entitled as a shareholder) Chevron had the Houston police throw her in jail for 24 hours.  Have a look at the coverage of the arrests on Democracy Now.

While in San Francisco I was invited to speak at a progressive conference that made me uneasy.  It was an expression I heard there actually that got to me.  Over and over people would describe the gathering as, “a safe space to talk about…” whatever the thing was they wanted to talk about.  I finally realized what people meant by the term “safe space” – a venue in which one could express a point of view and not have its basic assumptions challenged. 

the victory could be short-lived. Last week a panel of international arbitrators in The Hague granted Chevron a preliminary injunction that could block the plaintiffs' efforts to enforce the judgment.

Meanwhile, Chevron is using the U.S. courts, in hopes of never paying anything at all. The company sued the plaintiffs and their lawyers in the U.S., where a federal judge recently issued a temporary stay blocking the plaintiffs' American lawyers from seeking to enforce any judgment.

Chevron has also sued the country of Ecuador under the terms of a trade agreement between it and the U.S.

Pablo Fajardo, the lead Ecuadorian lawyer for the plaintiffs said the judgement was “a great step that we have made towards the crystallisation of justice”, but added the fine was too small – far below the $27.3bn sought by the plaintiffs – and they may appeal. He added that his team would now “take whatever actions appropriate” and “consistent with the law” to press for payment.

They added: “Chevron has spent the last 18 years waging unprecedented public relations and lobbying campaigns to avoid cleaning up the environmental and public health catastrophe it left in the Amazon rainforest. Today’s guilty verdict sends a loud and clear message: It is time Chevron clean up its disastrous mess in Ecuador.”

Ironically Chevron’s share price actually rose 1.3 per cent on the news, meaning that investors believe that Chevron will never pay.

I think most importantly, what we demonstrated was that Chevron is afraid of the organizing against it, that when the communities from the location where it operates not only tell the truth about what it does, but link and form a community and a network, that we send an enormous amount of fear and shock through this company, because, believe me, this has never happened in a Chevron meeting before.

Chevron has a beautiful human rights policy, where they guarantee a two-way communication between the community people and Chevron. But on Wednesday, they outrightly did not respect even their own human rights policy. What happened is a confirmation and a demonstration of the abuse of human rights in the Niger Delta region by Chevron. It’s the demonstration by the use of brutal force by Chevron to suppress the indigenous people of the Niger Delta region. It’s a direct demonstration of the fact that Chevron does not listen to the voices of the people, to the complaints of the people, to the plight and conditions of the people of the Niger Delta communities.

The Bowoto case is the legal reaction to Chevron’s role in a 1998 protest by Nigerian community activists in the Niger Delta. The unarmed demonstrators boarded an oil platform and adjacent barge, property of subsidiary Chevron Nigeria Ltd, in protest over the environmental and economic damage caused by oil production in the region. The activists were attacked on 28 May by Nigerian authorities ferried to the floating protest by the oil corporation. Two men were killed and several more protestors injured. Three others claim detention and torture.

After nearly 10 years of pre-trial motions wherein many claims were dropped by a pre-trial judge, the case finally debuted in trial in October 2008 and a decision was handed down on 1 December the same year. The nine-bench jury decided in favour of Chevron, clearing the corporation of any liability under the various claims. It was a defendant’s victory, but civil society groups and legal experts still label the case a milestone in advancing corporate accountability.

The Bowoto case is the first time the multinational magnate Chevron USA Inc. has been successfully taken to a US court for the actions of an overseas subsidiary. ‘Chevron has a very intricate structure, used in part to try and shield itself from liability,’ Simons said. The case has effectively scrapped this corporate strategy.