Rally for Steven Donziger’s Release and Justice for Ecuadorean Victims of Chevron's Toxic Legacy

On Friday, August 6, 2021 at 12:00 noon, the Centre for Law & the Environment will hold a peaceful rally to mark the two-year anniversary of US human rights lawyer Steven Donziger’s home detention, demand his immediate release and call for justice for the victims of the deliberate contamination of the Ecuadorean Amazon by Chevron's predecessor company, Texaco. The rally will take place on the public sidewalk outside the Bentall Centre, 1050 W. Pender Ave, Vancouver, BC.

Visit the Facebook event page to join in and for more information.

Friday, August 6, 2021 is the two-year mark of the home detention of American human rights lawyer Steven Donziger, who helped his Indigenous and non-Indigenous clients secure a US $9.5 billion court judgment in Ecuador against Chevron for deliberate, decades-long contamination of the Ecuadorean Amazon by its predecessor, Texaco. Chevron retaliated by suing Donziger and the Ecuadorean plaintiffs in the US, where it managed to convince trial and appeal courts that the Ecuadorean judgment was procured by fraud. Chevron also sued Donziger for civil contempt of court for refusing to obey orders requiring him to hand over to Chevron computers and devices containing confidential attorney-client information. The judge in that case, a former tobacco industry lawyer, referred his own criminal contempt of court allegations against Donziger to the US Attorney’s office, which declined to press charges. The judge then appointed a law firm that had Chevron as a client as a private prosecutor to try Donziger for criminal contempt of court, which is a misdemeanor (petty) offence. The judge presiding over that prosecution put Donziger under pre-trial house arrest in August, 2019 and last week convicted him on all six counts of criminal contempt, in a process that lawyers and Nobel laureates around the world condemned as improper and unjust.

Donziger remains in home detention today and has already spent longer in detention than the maximum sentence available for the offence for which he was prosecuted.

This will be one of many rallies on August 6 calling for Donziger’s release and for justice for the Ecuadorians, to be held in cities around the world including Quito, Los Angeles, New York and Boston.

Steven Donziger is one of the lawyers profiled in the Centre for Law & the Environment's Green Rights and Warrior Lawyers project. He was a featured speaker in the Centre's No Fly Zone speaker series in October, 2020. Watch his talk below, or visit our Youtube channel.

For more information, watch Steven discuss his conviction for criminal contempt of court: https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/565505-steven-donziger-human-rights-attorney-discusses-being-found-guilty-of-contempt

Learn more about the case and support Steven’s defence: https://www.donzigerdefense.com/

Follow Steven on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SDonziger?s=20.