Photo by Luke Thomas
By Ari Burack
May 28, 2008
On the eve of an annual shareholder meeting of the San Ramon-based Chevron Corp., human rights activists gathered Tuesday at San Francisco City Hall to protest alleged human rights and environmental abuses by the oil company.
Current and former residents of Nigeria, Ecuador and Burma joined members of the group Amazon Watch Tuesday morning, decrying what they claim has been a “deeply rooted” pattern of violations by Chevron and other oil companies, both internationally and locally, in the name of profit.
Larry Bowoto, a Nigerian community leader who is currently a plaintiff in a federal lawsuit against Chevron, said he was shot several times by members of the Nigerian military called in by Chevron during an environmental and economic protest at a Chevron offshore oil platform in 1998.
Bowoto said he and about 100 other unarmed villagers had been protesting the loss of the local fishing industry and clean drinking water due to pollution created by the oil company.
Two other protestors reportedly died, while others were injured and some were tortured in a Nigerian jail, the human rights group claims.
Bowoto said Chevron has never apologized or compensated the victims.
Bowoto demanded that Chevron “clean up its environmental and economic damage,” adding the company “must give up violence as a way of doing business.”
The federal lawsuit, scheduled to go to trial in U.S. District Court in San Francisco in September, claims Chevron should be held liable for the conduct of its Nigerian subsidiary, Chevron Nigeria Ltd.
Chevron spokesman Kent Robertson Tuesday called the notion that the 1998 demonstration was peaceful “laughable.” He said demonstrators held about 150 oil workers hostage for three days, threatening acts of violence and sea piracy, in a “violent occupation of private property by those seeking to extort cash payments from Chevron’s subsidiary.”
Robertson said the protestors armed themselves on the oil platforms with machetes and pipes, roughed up workers and poured diesel on a barge and threatened to set it afire with workers still on it. Military and police were called in and fired in self-defense, he said.
Naw Musi, a Burmese human rights activist, spoke Tuesday about \alleged abuses in her home country, where she said the military regime of the country, now called Myanmar, has profited from Chevron’s business but has failed to sufficiently support its people with education and health care.
Musi claimed that Chevron “has stayed silent” in the wake of the Myanmar government’s crackdown on protestors. She said that even though the company has pledged $2 million to aid victims of the recent cyclone disaster, many victims have yet to receive adequate assistance.
“If any power can influence the military regime, it is corporate power,” Musi said.
Chevron spokesman Kurt Glaubitz said that his company’s contribution to cyclone victims has been larger than some of the other countries in the region have pledged, and unlike some other aid, has made it through to victims.
Glaubitz contended that Chevron’s 28-percent, non-operating interest in a Myanmar gas pipeline has actually benefited the populations that live along it, both socio-economically and in terms of health. He said people living in the pipeline corridor are more educated and have a lower
infant mortality rate than those in other parts of the country, and are given free healthcare and vaccinations.
“Our belief is that, by being there, we’re able to improve the lives of the people of Myanmar, especially along the pipeline corridor,” Glaubitz said. “We have a commitment to their well-being, and if we were to leave, we have concern that other companies that may take our place may not share those same values,” he said.
According to Glaubitz, Chevron has no relationship with the Myanmar government.
“In general, we stick to our business in meeting the (fuel) needs of the world,” Glaubitz said.
“We stay out of the politics in the countries where we operate,” he said.
Emergildo Crillo, a leader of an indigenous Amazonian group in Ecuador, said Tuesday that decades of oil drilling by Texaco, now part of Chevron Corp., has polluted his people’s drinking water and led to severe health problems, including the death of two of his young children.
Crillo claimed the company drained the region’s natural resources while profiting immensely, “but they left us nothing but sickness and death, sickness that our shamans don’t know how to cure,” he said.
Torm Nompraseurt, a Laotian immigrant who now lives in Richmond, said that years after his homeland suffered the toxic effects of Agent Orange, he feared the environmental consequences of the planned “expansion” of Chevron’s refinery there.
“Here I am in Richmond, finding another pollution here,” he said.
Chevron’s Richmond refinery spokesman Dean O’Hair said the project, which is still going through the permitting process, was not an expansion but a “renewal,” replacing aging power plants with more reliable, energy-efficient, and less polluting models, expected to cost in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Rallies by several activist groups are planned at the Chevron’s shareholders meeting this morning at the company’s San Ramon headquarters, where shareholders may discuss issues on host country laws and human rights, according to Robertson.
In San Francisco, supervisors Tom Ammiano, Ross Mirkarimi and Chris Daly have planned to introduce a resolution that would condemn Chevron Corp. “for a systemic pattern of ethically questionable investments, complicity in human rights abuses, and environmental devastation in countries and communities in which it operates.”
More information:
Simeon Tagel, Amazon Watch spokesman (415) 487-9600, ext. 22
ChevronTexaco media relations (925) 842-0050
Chevron spokesman Kurt Glaubitz (925) 842-2561
Chevron Richmond refinery spokesman Dean O’Hair (510) 242-2400
Federal lawsuit plaintiff’s attorney Bert Voorhees (626) 585-9611
The Hunger Site
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