March, 25 2015, 08:30am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Paul Paz y Miño: +1 (510) 773 4635, paz@amazonwatch.org
Adam Zuckerman: +1 (510) 281 9020 x309, adam@amazonwatch.org
Human Rights Groups Denounce Chevron CEO John Watson Over Citizenship Honor
San Francisco, CA
More than 35 environmental and human rights groups are denouncing the San Francisco Commonwealth Club's decision to bestow Chevron CEO John Watson with a citizenship award slated to be presented April 2nd at its annual gala.
Many of the nation's leading environmental and human rights advocates are jointly asking the Board of the Commonwealth Club to rescind the citizenship award planned to be given to Chevron CEO John Watson in light of the company's egregious environmental destruction in Ecuador's Amazon and its attempts to manipulate a local election in a town where the company operates a refinery whose toxins forced thousands to seek medical care last year.
In a letter to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco - which counts many prominent citizens as members - the environmental groups said any award to Watson would be an "affront not only to the ideals of the Commonwealth Club but also to the tens of thousands of people in communities in Ecuador and around the world affected by Chevron's deliberate and reckless acts of environmental destruction."
"The award of the Commonwealth Club is intended to recognize those who have made significant contributions to the global community," said the letter, signed by Amazon Watch, Rainforest Action Network, Food and Water Watch, Global Exchange and almost 40 other civil society groups. "Mr. Watson does not come close to living up that ideal."
The letter demands that the Commonwealth Club rescind the award or risk imposing "dishonor on its own tradition" of community service. Watson and three others, including Jennifer Siebel Newsom, wife of Lt. Gov Gavin Newsom, are scheduled to be honored by the club on April 2nd at a gala fundraising dinner in San Francisco.
Environmental group Amazon Watch, which organized the letter, issued a separate statement criticizing the Commonwealth Club for bestowing the award despite widespread reports that Chevron has failed to deal with its decades-long legacy of environmental problems.
"John Watson has consistently violated the ideals of good citizenship given that Chevron, under his leadership, has engaged in rapacious behavior in vulnerable communities in Ecuador and around the world," said Paul Paz y Mino, a spokesperson for the organization. "This appears to be a pay to play situation where the Commonwealth Club sacrifices its ideals thinking the many fat cats from Chevron will buy tickets to the dinner."
The letter cited Chevron's growing legal problems related to its environmental liabilities.
In 2013, after 11 years of proceedings in Chevron's chosen forum, the Supreme Court of Ecuador unanimously affirmed the company's $9.5 billion liability for systematically dumping billions of gallons of oil waste into rainforest waterways relied on by local indigenous and farmer communities for their drinking water, bathing, and fishing. During the eight-year trial, a Chevron executive admitted the company discharged the toxic waste to lower their production costs.
Chevron has refused to pay the award, with executives under Watson's leadership openly vowing to fight the case until "hell freezes over" if the villagers persist in pursuing their claims.
Earlier this year in Davos, Chevron received an embarrassing lifetime achievement award from the Public Eye Awards for its bad corporate behavior in Ecuador and around the world. Chevron remains the only corporation in the world to receive the award twice.
The letter also cited Chevron's awkwardly unsuccessful attempt last year to contribute millions of dollars to elect a slate of pro-Chevron candidates in the Bay Area town of Richmond, where the company operates a refinery that has caused extensive pollution. An explosion there in 2012 led to criminal charges and prompted 15,000 people to seek medical attention, said the letter.The plan backfired and none of the Chevron candidates in Richmond won office.
The letter also pointed out that in 2014, more than 40 civil society groups wrote a different open letter to Watson criticizing his company's attempts to use retaliatory lawsuits to harass and silence critics of the company's misconduct in Ecuador. Chevron confessed to using 60 law firms and 2,000 legal personnel to attack more than 100 lawyers and community activists who helped to hold the company accountable in the South American nation, where Chevron had accepted jurisdiction after the original claims were filed in the United States.
"It is shocking that the Commonwealth Club would even consider honoring an oil company executive who has "distinguished" himself by his near total lack of moral compass across so many issues of public importance," said the letter.
Amazon Watch said they were in the process of reaching out to the other honorees to urge them to not accept an award alongside Watson. All were copied on the letter, which was sent to each Board Member of the Commonwealth Club.
Amazon Watch is a nonprofit organization founded in 1996 to protect the rainforest and advance the rights of indigenous peoples in the Amazon Basin. We partner with indigenous and environmental organizations in campaigns for human rights, corporate accountability and the preservation of the Amazon's ecological systems.
LATEST NEWS
UN Chief Warns of Israel's Syria Invasion and Land Seizures
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres stressed the "urgent need" for Israel to "de-escalate violence on all fronts."
Dec 12, 2024
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said Thursday that he is "deeply concerned" by Israel's "recent and extensive violations of Syria's sovereignty and territorial integrity," including a ground invasion and airstrikes carried out by the Israel Defense Forces in the war-torn Mideastern nation.
Guterres "is particularly concerned over the hundreds of Israeli airstrikes on several locations in Syria" and has stressed the "urgent need to de-escalate violence on all fronts throughout the country," said U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric.
Israel claims its invasion and bombardment of Syria—which come as the United States and Turkey have also violated Syrian sovereignty with air and ground attacks—are meant to create a security buffer along the countries' shared border in the wake of last week's fall of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and amid the IDF's ongoing assault on Gaza, which has killed or wounded more than 162,000 Palestinians and is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case.
While Israel argues that its invasion of Syria does not violate a 1974 armistice agreement between the two countries because the Assad dynasty no longer rules the neighboring nation, Dujarric said Guterres maintains that Israel must uphold its obligations under the deal, "including by ending all unauthorized presence in the area of separation and refraining from any action that would undermine the cease-fire and stability in Golan."
Israel conquered the western two-thirds of the Golan Heights in 1967 and has illegally occupied it ever since, annexing the seized lands in 1981.
Other countries including France, Russia, and Saudi Arabia have criticized Israel's invasion, while the United States defended the move.
"The Syrian army abandoned its positions in the area... which potentially creates a vacuum that could have been filled by terrorist organizations," U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said at a press briefing earlier this week. "Israel has said that these actions are temporary to defend its borders. These are not permanent actions... We support all sides upholding the 1974 disengagement agreement."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Sanders Says 'Political Movement,' Not Murder, Is the Path to Medicare for All
"Killing people is not the way we're going to reform our healthcare system," he said. "The way we're going to reform our healthcare system is having people come together."
Dec 12, 2024
Addressing the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and conversations it has sparked about the country's for-profit system, longtime Medicare for All advocate Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday condemned the murder and stressed that getting to universal coverage will require a movement challenging corporate money in politics.
"Look, when we talk about the healthcare crisis, in my view, and I think the view of a majority of Americans, the current system is broken, it is dysfunctional, it is cruel, and it is wildly inefficient—far too expensive," said Sanders (I-Vt.), whose position is backed up by various polls.
"The reason we have not joined virtually every other major country on Earth in guaranteeing healthcare to all people as a human right is the political power and financial power of the insurance industry and drug companies," he told Jacobin. "It will take a political revolution in this country to get Congress to say, 'You know what, we're here to represent ordinary people, to provide quality care to ordinary people as a human right,' and not to worry about the profits of insurance and drug companies."
Asked about Thompson's alleged killer—26-year-old Luigi Mangione, whose reported manifesto railed against the nation's expensive healthcare system and low life expectancy—Sanders said: "You don't kill people. It's abhorrent. I condemn it wholeheartedly. It was a terrible act. But what it did show online is that many, many people are furious at the health insurance companies who make huge profits denying them and their families the healthcare that they desperately need."
"What you're seeing, the outpouring of anger at the insurance companies, is a reflection of how people feel about the current healthcare system."
"What you're seeing, the outpouring of anger at the insurance companies, is a reflection of how people feel about the current healthcare system," he continued, noting the tens of thousands of Americans who die each year because they can't get to a doctor.
"Killing people is not the way we're going to reform our healthcare system," Sanders added. "The way we're going to reform our healthcare system is having people come together and understanding that it is the right of every American to be able to walk into a doctor's office when they need to and not have to take out their wallet."
"The way we're going to bring about the kind of fundamental changes we need in healthcare is, in fact, by a political movement which understands the government has got to represent all of us, not just the 1%," the senator told Jacobin.
The 83-year-old Vermonter, who was just reelected to what he says is likely his last six-year term, is an Independent but caucuses with Democrats and sought their presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020. He has urged the Democratic Party to recognize why some working-class voters have abandoned it since Republicans won the White House and both chambers of Congress last month. A refusal to take on insurance and drug companies and overhaul the healthcare system, he argues, is one reason.
Sanders—one of the few members of Congress who regularly talks about Medicare for All—isn't alone in suggesting that unsympathetic responses to Thompson's murder can be explained by a privatized healthcare system that fails so many people.
In addition to highlighting Sanders' interview on social media, Congressman Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) pointed out to Business Insider on Wednesday that "you've got thousands of people that are sharing their stories of frustration" in the wake of Thompson's death.
Khanna—a co-sponsor of the Medicare for All Act, led in the House of Representatives by Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.)—made the case that you can recognize those stories without accepting the assassination.
"You condemn the murder of an insurance executive who was a father of two kids," he said. "At the same time, you say there's obviously an outpouring behavior of people whose claims are being denied, and we need to reform the system."
Two other Medicare for All advocates, Reps. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), also made clear to Business Insider that they oppose Thompson's murder but understand some of the responses to it.
"Of course, we don't want to see the chaos that vigilantism presents," said Ocasio-Cortez. "We also don't want to see the extreme suffering that millions of Americans confront when your life changes overnight from a horrific diagnosis, and people are led to just some of the worst, not just health events, but the worst financial events of their and their family's lives."
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)—a co-sponsor of Sanders' Medicare for All Act—similarly toldHuffPost in a Tuesday interview, "The visceral response from people across this country who feel cheated, ripped off, and threatened by the vile practices of their insurance companies should be a warning to everyone in the healthcare system."
"Violence is never the answer, but people can be pushed only so far," she continued. "This is a warning that if you push people hard enough, they lose faith in the ability of their government to make change, lose faith in the ability of the people who are providing the healthcare to make change, and start to take matters into their own hands in ways that will ultimately be a threat to everyone."
After facing some criticism for those comments, Warren added Wednesday: "Violence is never the answer. Period... I should have been much clearer that there is never a justification for murder."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Reports Target Israeli Army for 'Unprecedented Massacre' of Gaza Journalists
"In Gaza, the scale of the tragedy is incomprehensible," wrote Thibaut Bruttin, director general of Reporters Without Borders.
Dec 12, 2024
Reports released this week from two organizations that advocate for journalists underscore just how deadly Gaza has become for media workers.
Reporters Without Borders' (RSF) 2024 roundup, which was published Thursday, found that at least 54 journalists were killed on the job or in connection with their work this year, and 18 of them were killed by Israeli armed forces (16 in Palestine, and two in Lebanon).
The organization has also filed four complaints with the International Criminal Court "for war crimes committed by the Israeli army against journalists," according to the roundup, which includes stats from January 1 through December 1.
"In Gaza, the scale of the tragedy is incomprehensible," wrote Thibaut Bruttin, director general of RSF, in the introduction to the report. Since October 2023, 145 journalists have been killed in Gaza, "including at least 35 who were very likely targeted or killed while working."
Bruttin added that "many of these reporters were clearly identifiable as journalists and protected by this status, yet they were shot or killed in Israeli strikes that blatantly disregarded international law. This was compounded by a deliberate media blackout and a block on foreign journalists entering the strip."
When counting the number of journalists killed by the Israeli army since October 2023 in both Gaza and Lebanon, the tally comes to 155—"an unprecedented massacre," according to the roundup.
Multiple journalists were also killed in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Mexico, Sudan, Myanmar, Colombia, and Ukraine, according to the report, and hundreds more were detained and are now behind bars in countries including Israel, China, and Russia.
Meanwhile, in a statement released Thursday, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) announced that at least 139 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed since the war in Gaza began in 2023, and in a statement released Wednesday, IFJ announced that 104 journalists had perished worldwide this year (which includes deaths from January 1 through December 10). IFJ's number for all of 2024 appears to be higher than RSF because RSF is only counting deaths that occurred "on the job or in connection with their work."
IFJ lists out each of the slain journalists in its 139 count, which includes the journalist Hamza Al-Dahdouh, the son of Al Jazeera's Gaza bureau chief, Wael Al-Dahdouh, who was killed with journalist Mustafa Thuraya when Israeli forces targeted their car while they were in northern Rafah in January 2024.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular