The fossil fuel industry and its allies in government continue to target renowned human rights lawyer Steven Donziger after he helped Amazon communities in Ecuador win a landmark $10 billion pollution judgment against Chevron. Steven needs our support — as do the brave communities in Ecuador who continue to suffer from cancers, spontaneous miscarriages, and other oil-related diseases.

 

To put it bluntly, after Chevron lost the pollution case they targeted Steven as a stand-in for the affected communities. The company sued him for $60 billion, the largest personal liability ever faced by anyone in the US; took his law license without a hearing; confiscated his passport; emptied his bank accounts; and ultimately imprisoned him on a contempt of court charge after the nation's first private corporate prosecution.

 

Steven spent a total of 993 days in detention on case with a maximum sentence of 180 days. The United Nations ruled his detention was arbitrary and illegal. Experts considered him to be a corporate political prisoner.

 

President Biden had the opportunity to correct a grave injustice by granting a pardon to Steven. Thirty-four members of Congress signed a letter urging the pardon. The President refused.

 

The background to this case is terrifying to anybody who believes in the rule of law. Findings by multiple courts show that between 1964 and 1990 Chevron deliberately dumped billions of gallons of cancer-causing oil waste onto Indigenous ancestral lands. The dumping poisoned waterways that communities depend on for drinking water, bathing, and fishing.

 

The resulting environmental catastrophe has killed thousands of Indigenous peoples and farmers and decimated forest culture. Many of these communities still do not have access to clean drinking water.

 

In 1993, Steven Donziger and other attorneys courageously stepped up to help represent Ecuadorian villagers in a lawsuit against Texaco (later purchased by Chevron), the company that perpetrated this disaster. In 2011, this legal team helped the villagers win a historic $9.5 billion pollution case against the oil giant after 18 years of hard-fought litigation.

 

But Chevron has not paid out one cent.

 

A Chevron spokesman even said the company would fight the Indigenous peoples until “hell freezes over” and then “fight it out on the ice.”

 

That was just the beginning of what might be the most vicious corporate retaliation campaign in US history. Chevron's primary goal was to completely destroy Mr. Donziger's reputation as both a lawyer and as an individual.

 

Chevron not only wanted to win the case. It wanted to kill off the very idea of the case.

 

Chevron hired 60 law firms and used 2,000 lawyers to relentlessly and unjustly target Mr. Donziger and his vulnerable clients. The company has spent an estimated $3 billion on this campaign.

 

The broader aim is to intimidate lawyers and advocates to not do the work.

 

Chevron went after Mr. Donziger personally, stripping him of his law license under the theory the case was a threat to the "public order". The company then locked up Mr. Donziger in the name of the US government. He spent close to three years under house arrest after refusing to give Chevron his computer and confidential case file.

 

Mr. Donziger was then sentenced to six months in federal prison in a subsequent contempt trial overseen by a judge who demonstrated a “staggering” and “appalling” level of bias in favor of Chevron, according to five prominent jurists from the United Nations. The same judge who charged Mr. Donziger with contempt of court also appointed the prosecutor from a Chevron law firm, supervised the prosecution, and acted as the jury in the same case.

 

The legal proceeding against Mr. Donziger violated the rule of law and embarrassed the United States in the eyes of the world. The Working Group On Arbitrary Detention of the United Nations determined Mr. Donziger’s detention to be “arbitrary” and "illegal" under international law.

 

Chevron's vicious retaliation continues to this day. After Biden refused a pardon, Mr. Donziger is vulnerable. He could be arrested on a moment's notice at Chevron's request. Without a pardon or a total reversal of Chevron's legal actions, Mr. Donziger will never be able to enjoy the rights of full citizenship under the law.

 

Supporting Steven will:

 

• Help correct a grave injustice carried out by the fossil fuel industry to retaliate against those who protect vulnerable communities from toxic contamination

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• Protect a global human rights leader and his family from retaliation by the oil industry; Support the freedom of all lawyers and advocates to fight for climate justice without fear of corporate retaliation

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• Demonstrate unwavering support for free speech, the rule of law, and our system of separation of powers that does not allow one person to be prosecutor, jury, and judge in a single case as happened here.

 

In addition to our ongoing request for a pardon, we urge the US government to start a comprehensive investigation into Chevron’s illegal and abusive retaliation campaign. As a result of Chevron’s failure to clean up its pollution in Ecuador, Amazon communities continue to face imminent risk of death and the decimation of their unique cultures.

 

Support for Mr. Donziger and justice for the Amazon communities is a matter of utmost legal and moral urgency.

 

If you are able, please consider contributing to Steven's crowdfunding campaign so we can build the resources we need to ensure the White House addresses this injustice without delay.