International legal battle between Chevron, Indigenous Ecuadorians continues in Ontario court

07/10/2017 - http://www.cbc.ca

A legal battle between Chevron and Indigenous villagers from Ecuador, spanning several decades and across three countries, is now playing out in Canada as Ontario courts consider whether to enforce foreign judgments here.

• Ecuadorians face off against Chevron in Ontario court over $9.5B US award

In 2011, Chevron Corp., the third-largest oil company in the United States, was ordered to pay $9.5 billion by an Ecuadorian court to compensate 30,000 Indigenous villagers living in the Lago Agrio region of Ecuador for environmental damages.

The villagers claimed Chevron was responsible for extensive environmental damage caused by oil-drilling activities by Texaco, Inc., which ended more than 20 years ago and before Chevron acquired ... Read more

BY BLOOD AND FIRE : MINING AND MILITARIZATION IN THE ECUADORIAN AMAZON

16/01/2017 - https://intercontinentalcry.org

Before dawn on the Dec. 21, 2016, dozens of police raided the headquarters of the Shuar Federation (FISCH) in the Ecuadorian Amazon and arbitrarily detained its president, Agustin Wachapá. The indigenous leader was thrown to the ground and repeatedly stamped on and ridiculed beneath the boots of police in front of his wife. The police then razed the Shuar Federation’s office—turning over furniture and carrying away computers. According to the indigenous leader's wife, her husband was taken away without any kind of explanation. An arrest warrant for Wachapá was never presented.  

Agustin Wachapá has since been accused of publicly calling for the mobilization and violent resistance of the Shuar communities against state security forces in San Juan Bosco, where the indigenous community in Nankints was evicted and had their homes demolished against their will to make way for the Chinese Explorcobres S.A. (EXSA) open-cut copper mine. In the two months since the forced eviction, members of the communities surrounding Nankints have twice ... Read More

Ecuador has begun drilling for oil in the world’s richest rainforest

14/01/2017 - http://www.vox.com/

As many of the planet's last hectares of wilderness give way to roads and towns, farms and soccer fields, gas stations and Starbucks, the Anthropocene marches on. Perhaps nowhere does the struggle between wild and manicured feel more palpable than in Ecuador, and nowhere in Ecuador is the battle for biological and cultural diversity more profound than in Yasuní National Park.

Situated on Ecuador's easternmost flank with Peru to the south and east and Colombia only a short distance north, the 6,101-square-mile park sits at the confluence of the western Amazon basin, the Andean foothills, and the equator. The park’s boundary encircles one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on the planet. A single hectare, an area roughly the size of a soccer field, might boast as many as 655 different kinds of trees, more than all native tree species in the continental US and Canada.

Some 500 fish species and 600 kinds of birds live in Yasuní’s streams and skies. Among the thousands of mammals that call this forest home are the endangered white-bellied spider monkey (Ateles belzebuth) and giant otter (Pteronura brasiliensis), and the near-threatened golden-mantled tamarin monkey (Saguinus tripartitus). The park is also the ancestral home of three indigenous tribes, the Huaorani, Tagaeri, and Taromenane, who still rely almost exclusively on the rainforest’s abundance for their food, medicine, and... Read More

Ecuador’s leading environmental group fights to stop forced closure

07/01/2017 - www.theguardian.com

Members of one of Latin America’s most well-known environmental organisations, Acción Ecológica, are fighting for their survival against a controversial attempt by Ecuador’s government to shut them down.

The move by the government came six days after violence between soldiers, police and indigenous Shuar people opposed to a Chinese-run copper development, Panantza-San Carlos, in the Cordillera del Condor region, and just two days after Acción Ecológica had called for a Truth Commission to be set up to investigate events there. The attempt to close the organisation has sparked severe criticism from UN human rights experts and outrage from numerous civil society organisations in Latin America and elsewhere.

On 20 December the Vice-Minister for Internal Security, Diego Torres Saldaña, requested the Minister of Environment, Walter Garcia Cedeño, to begin the process to “immediately dissolve” the Quito-based organisation. According to Torres Saldaña, Acción Ecológica has been using social media to express support for violence by Shuar against soldiers and police, to claim that... Read More

Ecuador Moves To Close Leading Environmental Organization as Part of Crackdown on Civil Society

     21/12/2016 - http://amazonwatch.org/

Ecuador's Environment Ministry announced yesterday its intention to shutter Acción Ecológica, the country's leading grassroots environmental organization. The move is a clear reprisal to the group's efforts to raise awareness about environmental and indigenous rights concerns over a planned mega-copper mine on the lands of the Shuar indigenous people in the southern Ecuadorian Amazon. Then yesterday evening the national police raided the offices of the Shuar federation, FICSH, detaining its president, Agustín Wachapa.

"We reject the assertion of the Ministry of the Environment that we have violated national law," said Acción Ecológica in a statement released after the announcement. "We have been scrupulous in our compliance with the law, and our actions are in full harmony with [the government's] National Plan for Good Living 2013-2017," which calls for participatory management of the country's environmental treasures like the Amazon.

Nonetheless, a government memo advocating for the closure – obtained by Acción Ecológica – cites the group's awareness-raising efforts about "the serious environmental impacts and the ecosystem that would result from the extractive activity" in the Cordillera del Condor – the location of the Chinese mining operation – "and to the violation of the rights of indigenous... Read More

Ecuador’s Standing Rock? Tanks and Helicopters Deployed Against Indigenous Shuar People Defending Ancestral Territory From Mega-Mining

21/12/2016 - chakanachronicles.com

The Shuar community of Nankints in Ecuador’s Southern Amazon region was evicted in August 2016 to make way for a Chinese copper mega-mining project. The mining company, through a court order, has claimed these indigenous territories without prior consultation or consent from the affected communities, who have lived there for hundreds of years. The land allocated for the project covers over 41,000 hectares and the forced evacuation of other Shuar communities is expected.

Since the August eviction, the county of San Juan Bosco has been militarized to quell protest. In November, several Shuar people attempted to reclaim the indigenous territory of Nankints within the San Juan Bosco county. Clashes broke out with police and military personnel guarding the mining camp, leaving several injured. The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), and the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon (CONFENIAE), called for dialogue with the Government to avoid further confrontations but no resolution was reached.

On Wednesday December 14th, a new confrontation took place in the mining camp, leaving one police officer dead and others wounded. After these events, the Ecuadorian Government announced a state of exception throughout the Morona Santiago province, stripping residents of the rights to freedom of movement, freedom of association, freedom of ... Read More

Out of Amazonia: Ecuador’s Indigenous People Take Their Case Against Chevron to Canada

20/12/2016 - http://www.counterpunch.org/

With eyes red with fatigue, Pablo Fajardo stood in front of a room of activists in Toronto, Canada explaining the plight of the more than 30,000 indigenous peoples and farmers whose lands in the Ecuadorian Amazon are covered in toxic sludge. Fajardo was presenting evidence that the pollution stems from decades of oil extractions by Chevron-Texaco, one of the world’s largest oil companies. He and his clients are fighting a drawn-out legal battle that is part of a growing list of high-profile cases brought by indigenous communities against extractive industries, a list that includes the Dakota Access Pipeline project opposed by the Standing Rock Sioux Nation and the case of the Navajo Nation versus the Environmental Protection Agency over the contamination of the Animas River from the Gold King Mine.

Fajardo, an Ecuadorian lawyer representing the affected people, is not only worn out from the four days of hearings in Toronto in September, but from the 23-year legal battle that seems to have no end.

“This was not an accident like Exxon or BP in the Gulf of Mexico. This was on purpose,” says Fajardo, pointing to images of thick, sticky tar coating a Delaware-sized section of once-fertile farmland.

“We’ve won in the Supreme Court of Ecuador, the court that Chevron chose to be tried in. We won against their 2,000 lawyers. We won $9.5 billion in settlements. We want to see that judgement... Read More

4 Indigenous Women Activists on the Fight to Protect Their Lands and Cultures

31/10/2016 - http://remezcla.com/

“Inclusive and sustainable cities” were among the sexy buzz words that echoed through the UN’s conference chambers last week during its third global conference on urban development in Quito, Ecuador. Hundreds of national delegations, mayors and leading experts in architecture and urban planning from 167 countries gathered in the Andean city to formulate new cures for the all-too familiar problems of poverty and exclusion that plague a growing urban world.

To build inclusive cities, U.N. Secretary-General Ban-Ki-Moon said in his inaugural speech on October 17, means “engaging women and girls in making towns and cities safer and more productive for all.” But just a stone’s throw away from where the official raised the need to include and engage women, a protest march led by indigenous women and girls were welcomed with daunting barricades of riot police... Read More

Amnesty International just sent human rights observers to North Dakota to protect water protectors

28/10/2016 - http://usuncut.com/

Amnesty International USA (AIUSA) has sent a team of human rights observers to monitor law enforcement response to those protesting the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.

The decision to send the team came in response to reports of militarized police deploying pepper spray, bean bags, and strip searches, as well as a case where improperly trained mercenaries allowed guard dogs to bite multiple protesters. The protesters – who prefer to be referred to as water protectors – have so far emphasized the importance of peaceful protesting tactics. Members of the media have also been arrested for covering the confrontations.

“Our observers are here to... Read more

Eriberto Gualinga, my people the Sarayaku’s fight against oil and gas

25/10/2016 - http://www.lifegate.com/

Ecuador was found guilty of granting indigenous Sarayaku land to an oil and gas company. We speak to community member Eriberto Gualinga to find out what has changed since.

It has been four years since the Inter-American Court of Human Rights found Ecuador guilty of granting the ancestral land of the Sarayaku in concession to an oil and gas company. The community of about 1,200 indigenous Kichwa people is situated along the Bobonaza River, in the southern part of the Ecuadorian Amazon.

In 2012, the Court reaffirmed the right of indigenous groups to be consulted on projects that affect their territories, safeguarding the right to land of all communities that have based their economy, culture and religion on their relationship and synergy with nature. In order to discover what has happened ... Read More

Ecuador’s Yasuni park: where oil vies with tourism for the rainforest

23/10/2016 - www.theguardian.com

Fernando was sitting on his veranda listening to the whoops and whistles of the jungle. Our visit was a surprise, but the old man was soon answering my questions, keen to talk.

“I arrived here in about 1960,” he told me. “A group of us came to start a new life. Hunting was easy. The animals were almost tame. We just used a blowpipe, no guns.”

I looked at him. No one knew for sure how old Fernando was – probably about 80 – but he was the oldest person in this 370 sq km of Ecuadorian jungle that’s home to the Sani community. He had seen the virgin wilderness subject to a lot of change: ecotourism arrived in the early 2000s, following less benign incomers in the shape of oil companies.

“They came a few years after I did, scaring the animals away. At least in our area we chose tourism. We kept our jungle, and our community spirit.”... Read More

Xukuru-Kariri indigenous leader assassinated in Brazil

18/10/2016 - http://www.survivalinternational.org/

A Brazilian Indian leader at the forefront of his people’s struggle to reclaim their ancestral land has been assassinated.

João Natalício Xukuru-Kariri was reportedly stabbed to death outside his home. Reports suggest that two men killed João, but their identities have not been confirmed.

Seu João, as he was known, was heavily involved in the Xukuru-Kariri tribe’s campaign to live on their ancestral land, a right enshrined in Brazilian and international law.

Another Xukuru-Kariri leader told the Brazilian support group CIMI: “The region has a history of violence resulting from the land struggle. Seu João was a respected leader of... Read More

Yasuni Man film is an intimate portrait of a beautiful land under siege for its oil

12/10/2016 - www.theguardian.com

Watching a film-maker use tweezers to extract wriggling, inch-long Amazonian parasites from his bloody leg would normally rank among the more stomach-churning of cinematic experiences, but it is a mere sideshow in a new documentary that shows Ecuador’s most famous nature reserve faces far graver threats than it poses.

Over the past seven years, US biologist Ryan Killackey has endured bot fly larvae, dysentery, bullet ant stings and malignant melanoma in order to film an intimate and polemical account of a remote forest community under pressure from US and Chinese oil companies.

The result is Yasuni Man, a 90-minute record of a stunningly beautiful region believed to be one of the most biodiverse on the planet at a particularly troubled time in its history.

It focuses on the Yasuni biosphere reserve, which inspired hope around the world in 2007 when the Ecuadorian government announced a global... Read More

Indigenous activist advocates passionately for her community and her land

Indigenous leader Patricia Gualinga (center) speaks with Leila Salazar-López (left)
 and Alec Baldwin about her activism at the Social Good Summit on Sept. 19, 2016.

19/09/2016 - http://mashable.com/

Indigenous leader Patricia Gualinga lives in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, where oil, minerals and lumber are abundant. She says her people, the Kichwa people of Sarayaku, are one with the land. 

It's land companies and miners are hungry to destroy. But Gualinga won't let that happen.

For the past 25 years, Gualinga has been tirelessly dedicated to keeping oil, mineral and lumber extraction off of Sarayaku land.

At the 2016 Social Good Summit on Monday, Gualinga — who is the international representative for the Kichwa of Sarayaku of the Ecuadorian Amazon — spoke with actor and advocate Alec Baldwin about her fight to keep indigenous land pure, while also curbing climate change. Gualinga's answers were translated into English for the discussion by Leila Salazar-López, executive director of ... Read More

Members of Sarayaku Tribe from Ecuador joins Dakota Access Pipeline protesters at Sacred Stone Camp

14/09/2016 - http://www.kfyrtv.com/

Authorities arrested five more people Wednesday for their involvement in chaining themselves to Dakota Access Pipeline construction equipment.

Meanwhile at the Sacred Stone camp near Cannon Ball, Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Chairman Dave Archambault welcomed a tribal leader from Ecuador.

Archambault says hosting dozens of tribes over the last several weeks shows how strong the solidarity is for the anti-Dakota Access movement.

The visitor spoke through a translator.

"We're fighting to protect our rivers and our lands. So he is calling upon the people from here, everyone that lives... Read More

Ecuador Announces First Commercial Barrel of Oil from Yasuní's ITT Fields

07/09/2016 - http://amazonwatch.org/

From deep inside the most biodiverse part of Earth's largest rainforest, there is terrible news: Oil extraction has begun in quite possibly the worst place imaginable.

Commercial oil production has begun at Tiputini C, the first of a slated 200-plus wells inside the ITT fields (Ishpingo, Tambococha,Tiputini) underneath Ecuador's Yasuni National Park. The remote UNESCO Biosphere Reserve that borders Peru has some of the highest species of birds, mammals, amphibians, insects, and trees ever recorded. In just one hectare it has more tree species than there are in all of the United States and Canada combined, an area that is one billion times that size. Scientists believe that Yasuní's unique concentration of biodiversity and hotspot of endemic species are due to a climate that allowed species to survive the Ice Age.

The park is also home to the Tagaeri-Taromenane, two indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation. Drilling and planned expansion into the park is a virtual death sentence for them, surrounding the nomadic peoples with oil... Read More

Negotiations and protests ongoing in wake of oil spills in Peruvian Amazon

05/09/2016 - https://news.mongabay.com

Negotiations on Aug. 31 between national government officials and leaders and residents of Nueva Alianza, an indigenous community in the Peruvian Amazon, ended an impasse over cleanup of about 4,000 barrels of oil that spilled from two pipeline breaks 10 days earlier. But the talks left many questions unanswered and local residents dissatisfied.

While the meeting was under way in Nueva Alianza, at the confluence of the Urituyacu and Marañón rivers in Peru’s northeastern Loreto region, a protest over oil operations was brewing downstream in San José de Saramuro, where the troubled northern Peruvian oil pipeline begins.

That protest erupted on Sept. 1, with demonstrators blocking the Marañón River, a crucial waterway connecting the key Amazonian city of Iquitos with highways to the coast. The protesters’ demands include replacement of the deteriorated pipeline, remediation of 40 years’ worth of oil pollution in the Amazon, compensation for damages, and an environmental ... Read More

WHERE DID THE SWALLOWS GO? CLIMATE CHANGE HAS ARRIVED IN BRAZIL'S XINGU INDIGENOUS PARK

03/09/2016 - https://intercontinentalcry.org

Climate Change is no longer some abstract idea that we can debate or dismiss. In Brazil's Xingu Indigenous Park, climate change has arrived.

The signs are everywhere. Cicadas no longer announce that the rain is coming. Swallows no longer fly in droves to announce the start of the rains. The butterflies are gone. The Monkeys are gone. Trees are refusing to blossom. Fruit and staple foods like cassava and potato are going rotten before they mature. Fires rage out of control, tearing through the rainforest with alarming ease. And it's getting hotter.

This film by Instituto Socioambiental and Instituto Catitu looks at the devastating causes and effects of these changes that threaten not only... Read More

Peru Oil Pipeline's 4th Leak Spills More Crude in the Amazon

11/08/2016 - http://www.telesurtv.net/

The company behind the spill, Petroperu, has not released an estimate of the amount of oil leaked or the extent of environmental damage.

Communities in the Peruvian Amazon are facing a new environmental disaster as a 40-year-old pipeline operated by state oil company Petroperu has experienced a major oil spoll for the fourth time this year.

The company reported that the 93-mile (150 km) long Nieva River has not been impacted by the leak and that Petroperu is taking steps to protect the area’s water sources. It claimed that the response is “advancing rapidly” to contain the spill and remediate the area... Read More

4 stories of Indigenous Peoples’ struggle for climate justice

09/08/2016 - http://www.greenpeace.org/

Racism, deforestation, powerful mining companies, colonialism, the oil industry – Indigenous People across the world are fighting so many things in the struggle for climate justice.

From Canada to Honduras to Brazil to Finland, Indigenous Peoples face systematic oppression, government ambivalence and corporate greed - and with a changing climate their battles have gotten even bigger. When your life, existence and culture is threatened, you can't run away - speaking truth to power is the only way to live.

It is only Indigenous People that can tell us what it’s like to be at the forefront of Indigenous resistance. That’s why, in honour of Indigenous Peoples Day, I spoke to Indigenous People from across the world. Here’s what they had to say about the struggles they face... Read More