share information on human rights defenders, with special focus on human rights awards and laureates
Nathalia Bonilla is an environmental human rights defender from Ecuador who works in the protection of the rights of Nature. She told ISHR about her country’s sharp policy turn in favour of extractive activities and spoke about the ‘utopia’ she and her peers would like to see in its place. ‘A revolution where you can’t dance is not my revolution,’ Nathalia said, in arguing for an ‘environmentalism for the people’.
Meet other defenders liker her: https://ishr.ch/defender-stories/
Nathalia Bonilla is an environmental human rights defender from Ecuador who works in the protection of the rights of Nature. She told ISHR about her country’s sharp policy turn in favour of extractive activities and spoke about the ‘utopia’ she and her peers would like to see in its place. ‘A revolution where you can’t dance is not my revolution,’ Nathalia said, in arguing for an ‘environmentalism for the people’.
https://ishr.ch/defender-stories/human-rights-defenders-story-nathalia-bonilla-from-ecuador
On 16 October 2025 Amazon Watch reported that more than 130 civil society and human rights organizations from across Latin America and around the world have issued an urgent appeal for an immediate end to repression, militarization, and human rights violations by the Ecuadorian government. The statement follows weeks of violent crackdowns against Indigenous-led protests that began on September 21, when social movements mobilized to defend democracy, rights, and the environment amid controversial government reforms.
According to Ecuadorian human rights groups, the government’s response has been brutal and disproportionate: at least three people have been killed, including Indigenous leader Efraín Fuerez; over 282 people injured; 172 detained; and 15 temporarily disappeared. Reports also confirm attacks on journalists, raids without warrants, internet blackouts, and summary deportations, while military operations continue across several provinces.
The joint declaration denounces the criminalization of Indigenous and human rights defenders, who face fabricated charges of terrorism, sabotage, and illicit enrichment, along with the freezing of organizational bank accounts. The signatories condemn President Daniel Noboa’s use of racist and stigmatizing rhetoric to justify state violence and to discredit legitimate social protest.
“Defending life, land, human rights, and freedom of expression cannot be criminalized. Peace cannot be imposed by force; it is built on truth, justice, and dialogue,” the statement affirms.
The organizations also point to international alarm: on October 8, seven United Nations Special Rapporteurs expressed concern about the repression and institutional rollbacks that weaken environmental protections and Indigenous rights. Two days later, members of the European Parliament called for a public EU statement, a monitoring mission, and a review of the E.U.–Ecuador Trade Agreement under its human rights clauses.
In response to the escalating crisis, Amazon Watch has launched an international action urging President Noboa to cease all violence immediately, end the criminalization of Indigenous movements, and ensure full respect for human rights and the rule of law.
Download the statement in PDF format to view a complete list of signatories.
On 20 October 2023 Front Line Defenders wrote that between 2 October 2023 and 16 October 2023, human rights defender Javier Medardo Feijoo Villa received several death threats via phone calls and voice messages towards both him and his family. The unidentified perpetrators claimed that they were keeping the human rights defender under surveillance, and maintained that they had access to his data and aware of all his moves within the community.l
Javier Medardo Feijoo Villa is the president of the Estero Piedras community, located in the coastal area of the Molleturo on Azuay province. This community is also part of the San Felipe de Molleturo Commune, an ancestral territory that has been of great importance to the region, given that it has fought to defend against attempts by transnational mining companies to dispossess the people in the region of their land and water sources. He is also president of the North Zone Road Committee, which represents 15 communities in the region. As a community leader, the human rights defender has sought support from the competent authorities to stop criminal acts and illicit activities, mainly assaults and robberies caused by criminal groups that threaten the area. Javier has played an important role in the defence of water, nature and the territories belonging to the communities who he represents.
Since 2 October 2023, human rights defender Javier Medardo Feijoo Villa has been the target of several death threats. Over the course of two weeks, he has received calls and voice messages threatening to kill him and his family. The callers claimed to be keeping the human rights defender under surveillance, and maintained that they had access to his data, as well as all his moves. The level of violence articulated in these threats increased over the weeks, causing the human rights defender to stop responding to messages or calls altogether, and provoking him to block the numbers of those who called him. The threats continued up until 16 October 2023. The human rights defender has been filing relevant complaints with the Prosecutor’s Office about the recent threats and has requested that the Police Commander of Zone 6 take the necessary measures protect him and his family.
Violence against human rights defenders working on indigenous, land and environmental rights has been on the rise in Ecuador; human rights defenders Andrés Durazno and Alba Bermeo were murdered in 2021 and 2022 respectively. Still to this day no one has been charged with their murder.
Front Line Defenders announced the five winners of its 2023 Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk, at a special ceremony in Dublin on 26 May 2023. Laureates from each of the major global regions travelled to Ireland to accept the Award, including:
“This year’s laureates are a courageous and inspiring group of people who reflect the determination, dynamism and diversity of human rights defenders (HRDs) who are on the front lines of fighting for a more just world,” said Olive Moore, Interim Director of Front Line Defenders. “Their vital work in defence of human rights in DRC, Ecuador, Jordan, Philippines and Ukraine impacts countless people in their communities and beyond. By shining an international spotlight on their struggles and empowering them to continue their work, we at Front Line Defenders hope this Award will touch the lives of many more people on whose behalf they act.”
For more on the Front Line award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk and its laureates, see: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/awards/2E90A0F4-6DFE-497B-8C08-56F4E831B47D
AFRICA
Olivier Bahemuke Ndoole (Democratic Republic of the Congo) is a leader among environmental and land defenders in DRC and one of the most trusted advocates on behalf of communities impacted by land grabs, trafficking, and illegal resource extraction activities. He is also the only advocate who organises judicial training and capacity-building sessions for DRC citizens on topics related to environment and community rights in Goma, eastern DRC.
AMERICAS
Segundo Ordóñez (Ecuador), an Afro-descendant human rights defender, is one of the most visible faces and the community representative in the two legal proceedings brought against the Japanese-owned company Furukawa Plantaciones C. A. and the State of Ecuador. The cases have focused on how workers on abacá (Manila hemp) plantations suffer labour exploitation as they farm the raw materials in slavery-like conditions.
ASIA AND THE PACIFIC
Jeany ‘Rose’ Hayahay (Philippines) is a woman human rights defender based in Mindanao, the Philippines. Since 2019, she has been the spokesperson of the Save Our Schools Network (SOS Network), a coalition of child-focused NGOs, church-based groups and other stakeholders advocating for children’s right to education in Mindanao.
EUROPE AND CENTRAL ASIA
Digital Security Lab Ukraine (Ukraine) is a team of specialists in the field of digital security and internet freedom. They help Ukrainian journalists, human rights defenders and public activists solve problems with digital security, as well as promote the realisation of human rights on the internet by influencing government policy in the field of digital rights.
MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA
Hala Ahed (Jordan) is a Jordanian human rights lawyer who has worked with a number of human rights and feminist organisations to defend women’s rights, workers’ rights, and the freedoms of opinion, expression and peaceful assembly in Jordan.
Jason Kelley and Veridiana Alimonti in EFF of 9 May 2022 report on the continuing saga of Ola Bini:
In preparation for what may be the final days of the trial of Ola Bini, an open source and free software developer arrested shortly after Julian Assange’s ejection from Ecuador’s London Embassy, civil society organizations observing the case have issued a report citing due process violations, technical weaknesses, political pressures, and risks that this criminal prosecution entails for the protection of digital rights. Bini was initially detained three years ago and previous stages of his prosecution had significant delays that were criticized by the Office of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression. An online press conference is scheduled for May 11th, with EFF and other organizations set to speak on the violations in Bini’s prosecution and the danger this case represents. The trial hearing is set for May 16-20, and will most likely conclude next week. If convicted, Bini’s defense can still appeal the decision.
The first part of the trial against Ola Bini took place in January. In this first stage of testimony and expert evidence, the court repeatedly called attention to various irregularities and violations to due process by the prosecutor in charge. Human rights groups observing the hearing emphasized the flimsy evidence provided against Bini and serious flaws in how the seizure of his devices took place. Bini’s defense stressed that the raid happened without him present, and that seized encrypted devices were examined without following procedural rules and safeguards.
These are not the only problems with the case. Over two years ago, EFF visited Ecuador on a fact-finding mission after Bini’s initial arrest and detention. What we found was a case deeply intertwined with the political effects of its outcome, fraught with due process violations. EFF’s conclusions from our Ecuador mission were that political actors, including the prosecution, have recklessly tied their reputations to a case with controversial or no real evidence.
Ola Bini is known globally as someone who builds secure tools and contributes to free software projects. Bini’s team at ThoughtWorks contributed to Certbot, the EFF-managed tool that has provided strong encryption for millions of websites around the world, and most recently, Bini co-founded a non-profit organization devoted to creating user-friendly security tools.
What Bini is not known for, however, is conducting the kind of security research that could be mistaken for an “assault on the integrity of computer systems,” the crime for which he was initially investigated, or “unauthorized access to a computer system,” the crime for which he is being accused now (after prosecutors changed the charges). In 2019, Bini’s lawyers counted 65 violations of due process, and journalists told us at the time that no one was able to provide them with concrete descriptions of what he had done. Bini’s initial imprisonment was ended after a decision considered his detention illegal, but the investigation continued. The judge was later “separated” from the case in a ruling that admitted the wrongdoing of successive pre-trial suspensions and the violation of due process.
Though a judge decided in last year’s pre-trial hearing to proceed with the criminal prosecution against Bini, observers indicated a lack of solid motivation in the judge’s decision.
A so-called piece of evidence against Bini was a photo of a screenshot, supposedly taken by Bini himself and sent to a colleague, showing the telnet login screen of a router. The image is consistent with someone who connects to an open telnet service, receives a warning not to log on without authorization, and does not proceed—respecting the warning. As for the portion of a message exchange attributed to Bini and a colleague, leaked with the photo, it shows their concern with the router being insecurely open to telnet access on the wider Internet, with no firewall.
Between the trial hearing in January and its resumption in May, Ecuador’s Prosecutor’s Office revived an investigation against Fabián Hurtado, the technical expert called by Ola Bini’s defense to refute the image of the telnet session and who is expected to testify at the trial hearing.
On January 10, 2022, the Prosecutor’s Office filed charges for procedural fraud against Hurtado. There was a conspicuous gap between this charge and the last investigative proceeding by prosecutors in the case against Hurtado, when police raided his home almost 20 months before, claiming that he had “incorporated misleading information in his résumé”. This raid was violent and irregular, and considered by Amnesty International as an attempt to intimidate Ola Bini’s defense. One of the pieces of evidence against Hurtado is the document by which Bini’s lawyer, Dr. Carlos Soria, included Hurtado’s technical report in Bini’s case file.
Hurtado’s indictment hearing was held on February 9, 2022. The judge opened a 90-day period of investigation which is about to end. As part of this investigation, the prosecutor’s office and the police raided the offices of Ola Bini’s non-profit organization in a new episode of due process violations, according to media reports.
Today’s report, by organizations gathered in the Observation Mission of Bini’s case, is critical for all participating and to others concerned about digital rights around the world. There is still time for the court to recognize and correct the irregularities and technical weaknesses in the case. It points out key points that should be taken into consideration by the judicial authorities in charge of examining the case.
In particular, the report notes, the accusations have failed to demonstrate a consistent case against Ola Bini. Irregularities in court procedures and police action have affected both the speed of the procedure and due process of law in general. In addition, accusations against Bini show little technical knowledge, and could lead to the criminalization of people carrying out legitimate activities protected by international human rights standards. This case may lead to the further persecution of the so-called “infosec community” in Latin America, which is made up primarily of security activists who find vulnerabilities in computer systems, carrying out work that has a positive impact on society in general. The attempt to criminalize Ola Bini already shows a hostile scenario for these activists and, consequently, for the safeguard of our rights in the digital environment.
Moreover, these activists must be guaranteed the right to use the tools necessary for their work—for example, the importance of online anonymity must be respected as a premise for the exercise of several human rights, such as privacy and freedom of expression. This right is protected by international Human Rights standards, which recognize the use of encryption (including tools such as Tor) as fundamental for the exercise of these rights.
These researchers and activists protect the computer systems on which we all depend, and protect the people who have incorporated electronic devices into their daily lives, such as human rights defenders, journalists and activists, among many other key actors for democratic vitality. Ola Bini, and others who work in the field, must be protected—not persecuted.
See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/tag/technologists/
but in the end an Ecuadorian court has found Ola Bini innocent: https://www.article19.org/resources/ecuador-ola-bini-innocent-verdict-must-lead-to-stronger-digital-rights/
https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/11/10/when-digital-rights-and-cybercrime-collide#
On 30 March 2022 CIVICUS reported on a very interesting case: On 11th March 2022, the National Assembly of Ecuador approved a bill granting amnesty to 268 people who faced prosecution for their defence of land, indigenous and environmental rights, and for their involvement in 2019 protests. The bill was approved by the plenary of the National Assembly with 99 favourable votes out of the 125 parliamentarians in attendance.
Among those benefitted by the amnesty, 153 are land defenders, 43 are environmental activists, 12 are Indigenous leaders criminalised for administering Indigenous justice and 60 others were more generally facing charges related to their involvement in the October 2019 demonstrations. Several defenders, such as Gabriela Fraga, Nancy Simba, Ángel Punina, Javier Ramírez and Jovita Curipoma, were cleared of charges related to resistance against extractive industries. Civil society groups also highlighted the case of Víctor Guaillas, a water defender who had been detained on charges of ‘sabotage’ in 2019, for whom amnesty came too late. Guaillas was one of the 62 people murdered in November 2021 amid a riot in a Guayaquil prison.
Ecuador’s Human Rights Alliance (DDHH) called the move a “historical precedent against the criminalisation and prosecution of rights defenders.” In a statement, the coalition said that this amnesty “means vindicating the right to truth and justice for those who exercise the right to defend human rights” in a context of recurrent criminalisation of these actors.
In a separate but related development, in December 2021 President Guillermo Lasso had made stigmatising statements about social movements and Leonidas Iza, the president of the Indigenous confederation Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas (CONAIE). Iza and former CONAIE president Jaime Vargas were among those facing prosecution related to October 2019 protests, and were both granted amnesty in March 2022.
On 21st December 2021, during a weekly broadcast programme in which he discusses government initiatives, Lasso called Iza “an anarchist” and “a violent man,” and claimed that the Indigenous leader “hates democracy.” The President accused the CONAIE leader of incentivising violence during the October 2019 protests. Lasso also said his government would use all the power of the state to jail “those who want to anarchise this country, disrupt public services, and deepen an economic crisis that has already been affected by the pandemic.”
On 22nd December 2021, the DDHH issued a statement expressing solidarity with the Indigenous movement and Leonidas Iza. The coalition said that Guillermo Lasso’s “violent and contemptuous discourse stigmatises the work carried out by social and political leaders, social and Indigenous movements, and makes unfounded and reckless attacks against Leonidas Iza.”
Lasso repeated his statements in a programme aired on 4th January 2022, calling Iza “an enemy of Ecuadorean democracy.”
On 27th January 2022, Ecuador’s Constitutional Court confirmed the violation “of the rights to prior consultation, to nature, water, a healthy environment, culture and territory, as well as comprehensive reparation measures”, regarding the A’i Cofán Indigenous people of the Sinangoe community in relation to mining concessions that affected their ancestral territory without their free, prior and informed consent. In their ruling, the country’s highest court reaffirmed the state’s obligations in consultation processes on plans and projects that affect Indigenous peoples’ rights and interests.
Indigenous communities and organisations have led the international campaign “Who Should Decide?”. Just days before this court ruling, they delivered more than 365,000 signatures to the Constitutional Court asking the Court to protect the right of Indigenous peoples to decide on the future of their ancestral territories.
International group Amazon Frontlines said that the Constitutional Court ruling recognises “for the first time, the right of Indigenous communities to have the final decision over oil, mining and other extractive projects that affect their lands.” The organisation also evaluated that Ecuador “now has one of the most powerful legal precedents in the world on the internationally recognised right of Indigenous peoples to Free, Prior and Informed Consent.”
See also my earlier: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2016/02/27/alarming-criminalisation-of-human-rights-defenders-in-latin-america/
For more than two years, human rights lawyer Steven Donziger – currently serving the remainder of a six month sentence on house arrest – has been arbitrarily detained in apparent retaliation for his work to hold Chevron accountable for its deliberate dumping of more than 16 billion gallons of toxic oil waste into the Amazon rainforest. Despite repeated calls from human rights advocates and governmental authorities for Donziger’s release, the Department of Justice has refused to respond or take any action to remedy this human rights violation. Today, over 100 human rights and environmental organizations from around the world joined Amnesty International, Greenpeace USA, Amazon Watch, Global Witness, Rainforest Action Network, HEDA Resource Center, ReCommon, and the Pachamama Alliance to call on President Biden to exercise his clemency powers to pardon Steven Donziger as a way to ensure his immediate release.
In a letter to President Biden, the organizations state: “More than four months since a discerning opinion by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention that found Steven Donziger’s detention to be arbitrary, U.S. judicial authorities have thus far failed to take any action to remedy the situation and implement the Working Group’s call to ensure Mr. Donziger’s immediate release.” See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2020/08/17/steven-donziger-speaks-out-himself-about-being-targetted-by-chevron
In a statement in October 2021, President Biden promised the U.S. would “stand in solidarity with, and continue to work tirelessly in support of, the activists, human rights defenders, and peaceful protestors on the front lines of the struggle between freedom and tyranny.”All the while, the administration has failed to side with the brave human rights defenders within the United States and respond to the demand of the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, Congress, and the international community to free Steven Donziger.
“Steven Donziger is a human rights defender that bravely stood up against one of the most powerful corporations in the world,” said Daniel Joloy of Amnesty International. “In response, he has endured years of harassment, intimidation, smear campaigns and more than two years in arbitrary detention. President Biden must now listen to the over 100 human rights and environmental organizations calling to pardon Steven Donziger and ensure he is released immediately and unconditionally. Allowing this ordeal to continue only sends a chilling message that corporations around the world can continue attacking human rights defenders without consequences.”
Paul Paz y Miño of Amazon Watch said “Instead of supporting the people of Ecuador who were poisoned by Chevron’s admitted deliberate dumping of billions of gallons of toxic waste, Biden has turned a blind eye to the persecution of a key lawyer who worked to win a historic judgment against Chevron. The U.S. government’s responsibility should be to make Chevron clean up its waste and support efforts to hold the fossil fuel company accountable, not allow the appointment of a private prosecutor with ties to the very same oil company to imprison human rights lawyer Steven Donziger. This travesty has gone on for over two years, and Biden has ignored members of the E.U. parliament, members of the House and Senate, and even the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Well over 100 organizations are now demanding action, and Biden’s lack of action continues to be a dark stain on his alleged claims to respect human rights. Oil companies do not prosecute and imprison people in the U.S. This must end now.”
Chevron’s legal attack on Donziger is not the first, nor will it be the last case of its kind. Right now, the right to dissent is being repressed by both our government and corporations
Annie Leonard, co-Executive Director Greenpeace USA
Simon Taylor, Co-Founder & Director, Global Witness said “I have spent much of the past 25 years seeking accountability of the fossil fuel industry for its gross human rights abuses and other crimes. Amongst the judicial authorities we have liaised with during this time, the Southern District of New York has stood as a beacon in this fight against criminality. Shockingly, just as Biden gears up this struggle, New York’s judicial authorities seem instead intent on destroying their reputation, thanks to their apparent complicity in the unprecedented corporate prosecution and judicial harassment of Steven Donziger. These acts, in my experience, are more what I would expect from one of the ‘Banana Republics’ we have investigated around the world. These are shameful acts. If Biden is serious about tackling the climate crisis, he cannot allow the fossil fuel industry to weaponise the US judicial system to go after its detractors – Biden must act now and release Steven Donziger.”
On Wednesday, 16 December 2020 Débora Leão and Suraj K. Sazawal published an opinion piece in IPS entitled: “USA Downgraded as Civil Liberties Deteriorate Across the Americas” (Débora Leão is a Civic Space Researcher at CIVICUS, the global civil society alliance. She has a Master of Public Policy degree. Prior to joining CIVICUS, Débora worked on advocacy and research related to civic participation, urban development and climate justice. Suraj K. Sazawal serves on the board to Defending Rights & Dissent and is co-author of ‘Civil Society Under Strain’, the first book to explore how the War on Terror impacted civil society and hurt humanitarian aid.
Protests in New York City against racism and police violence, following the death of George Floyd. Credit: UN Photo/Evan Schneider
Few images better illustrate the recent decline in civil liberties in the United States than that of peaceful protesters near the White House being violently dispersed so Donald Trump could stage a photo-op. Moments before the president emerged from his bunker on June 1 to hold a bible outside a boarded-up church, federal officers indiscriminately fired tear gas at people who had gathered in Lafayette Park to protest about the police killing of George Floyd. This was far from an isolated incident: nationwide protests against systemic racism and police brutality have been met with widespread police violence.
Since May, the CIVICUS Monitor, an online platform that tracks fundamental freedoms across 196 countries, documented dozens of incidents where law enforcement officers, dressed in riot gear and armed with military grade-equipment, responded to Black Lives Matter protests with excessive force. These include officers driving vehicles at crowds of protesters and firing tear gas canisters and other projectiles at unarmed people, leaving at least 20 people partially blinded.
Throughout the year, journalists and health workers, clearly marked as such while covering the protests, have been harassed and assaulted. In one incident caught on live TV, a news reporter and camera operator from Louisville, Kentucky were shot by police with pepper balls while covering protests over the police killing of Breona Taylor.
This sustained repression of protests and an increased crackdown on fundamental freedoms led to the USA’s civic space rating being downgraded from ‘narrowed’ to ‘obstructed’ in CIVICUS new report, People Power Under Attack 2020.
This disproportionate response by law enforcement officers to protesters goes beyond what is acceptable practice when policing protests, even during an emergency. Under international law, people have a right to assemble freely. Any restrictions to this right must be proportionate and necessary to address an emergency or reestablish public order.
While recent brutality against protests for racial justice is concerning, the decline in basic freedoms in the USA began before this crackdown. The repression seen in 2020 was preceded by a wave of legislation limiting people’s rights to protest.
In recent years, several states enacted restrictive laws which, for example, criminalise protests near so-called critical infrastructure like oil pipelines, or limit demonstrations on school and university campuses. Increased penalties for trespassing and property damage are designed to intimidate and punish climate justice activists and organisations that speak out against fossil fuels.
In the wake of Black Lives Matter protests, some of the ‘anti-protest’ bills introduced this year seem particularly cruel, for instance, by proposing to make people convicted of minor federal offences during protests ineligible for pandemic-related unemployment benefits.
Growing disregard for protest rights underscores wider intolerance for dissent. In parallel with restrictions on the freedom of peaceful assembly, the USA also saw an increase in attacks against the media, even before Black Lives Matter demonstrations erupted. Over the past three years, the CIVICUS Monitor has documented the frequent harassment of journalists by the authorities and civilians while covering political rallies or when conducting interviews.
Correspondents critical of the Trump administration or reporting on the humanitarian crisis in the USA/Mexico border region sometimes faced retaliation; documents obtained by ‘NBC 7 Investigates’ in 2019 showed the US government created a database of journalists who covered the migrant caravan and activists who were part of it, in some cases placing alerts on their passports.
In January 2020 a journalist was barred from accompanying Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in an official trip to Europe after Pompeo objected to the questions by another reporter from the same outlet.
The harsh treatment of people wanting to express themselves and the decline of civil liberties is part of a broader global decline in fundamental freedoms. Our new report shows less than four percent of the world’s population live in countries that respect the freedoms of association, peaceful assembly and expression.
Each country’s civic space is rated in one of five categories: ‘open, ‘narrowed, ‘obstructed,’ ‘restricted,’ or ‘closed’. The USA was one of 11 countries downgraded from its previous rating.
Another recent example may be that on 15 December 2020 five independent UN human rights experts expressed serious concern over the arrest and charges brought against an indigenous leader (Nicholas Tilsen, human rights defender of the Oglala-Lakȟóta Sioux Nation), for peacefully protesting a political rally held last July at Mount Rushmore National Memorial, located on treaty lands of the Great Sioux Nation.
In the Americas, three other countries showed significant declines: Chile and Ecuador were downgraded to ‘obstructed’ and Costa Rica’s rating changed to ‘narrowed’.[see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2020/07/01/even-costa-rica-has-serious-problem-with-protection-of-indigenous-defenders/] In the first two countries, as with the USA, rating changes reflected unnecessary and disproportionate crackdowns on mass protest movements.
Violations of protest rights were common across the region, with detention of protesters and excessive use of force among the top five violations of civic freedoms recorded this year. In addition, the Americas continue to be a dangerous place for those who dare to stand up for fundamental rights: across the world, 60 percent of human rights defenders killed in 2020 came from this region.
The authorities must engage with civil society and human rights defenders to create an environment where they are able to fulfil their vital roles and hold officials accountable.
Last September, I travelled from Western Canada to New York City to see the human rights lawyer Steven Donziger. Donziger cannot travel. He cannot even stroll the hallway of his Upper West Side apartment building on 104th Street without special court permission. He remains under house arrest, wearing an ankle bracelet. Eight years ago, Donziger and a team of Ecuadorian lawyers, on behalf of Indigenous and farmer plaintiffs, won the largest human rights and environmental court judgment in history, a $9.5-billion US verdict against the Chevron Corporation for massive oil pollution in Ecuador’s Amazon basin.
Following the trial, Chevron removed its assets from Ecuador, left the country, and has refused to pay. The company now claims the Ecuador verdict was achieved fraudulently, and produced a witness, who told a US court that he possessed knowledge of a bribe. Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled in Chevron’s favour, halting collection of the pollution fine in the US and placing Donziger in electronic chains in his home.
The details in this case really matter, so here the story in full:
Crime and punishment
Donziger, born in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1961, graduated from Harvard Law in 1991, and founded Project Due Process, offering legal services to Cuban refugees. In 1993, Ecuador’s Frente de Defensa de la Amazonía (FDA), representing 30,000 victims of Chevron’s pollution, heard about Donziger and asked him to help win compensation for their lost land, polluted water, and epidemics of cancer and birth defects in a region now known as the “Amazon Chernobyl.”
Donziger originally filed the claim in New York, but Chevron insisted the case be heard in Ecuador, where the trial began in 1993.
Evidence showed that between 1964 and 1992, Texaco (now Chevron) dumped 16 billion gallons of toxic wastewater into rivers and pits. Fifty-four judicial site inspections confirmed that the average Chevron waste pit in Ecuador contained 200 times the contamination allowed by US and world standards, including illegal levels of barium, cadmium, copper, mercury, lead, and other metals that can damage the immune and reproductive systems and cause cancer. According to Amazon Watch, by ignoring regulations, the company saved about $3 per barrel of oil, earning an extra $5 billion over 20 years.
In 2007, during the trial, Chevron stated that if the victims pursued the case, they faced a “lifetime of … litigation.” The plaintiffs persevered. Since the victims were dirt poor, Donziger and his team, with FDA support, devised an innovative solution to fund the case, offering investors a tiny portion of any eventual settlement.
In 2011, after an eight-year trial, the court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. Two appeals courts and the nation’s Supreme Court, the Court of Cassation, confirmed the decision. Seventeen appellate judges ruled unanimously that Chevron was responsible for the contamination and owed Donziger’s clients $9.5 billion.
The lone witness
According to court documents, Chevron “refus(ed) to comply” with the judgment and began to make good on its threat for a “lifetime of litigation.” According to internal company memos, Chevron launched a retaliatory campaign to attack the victims, discredit Ecuador’s courts, and “demonize” Donziger.
Chevron hired one of the world’s most notorious law firms, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher—previously censured by England’s High Court of Justice for fabricating evidence. Judges in California, Montana, and New York have censured and fined Gibson Dunn for such misbehavior as witness tampering, obstruction, intimidation, and what one judge called “legal thuggery.”
Using US RICO statutes designed to prosecute organized crime syndicates, the firm filed a “racketeering” case against Donziger. Judge Kaplan at the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York—a former tobacco company lawyer widely viewed as being friendly to large corporations—agreed to hear the peculiar case. Kaplan claimed the Ecuador trial “was not a bona fide litigation” and insulted the victims, calling them “so-called plaintiffs.” Gibson Dunn lawyer Randy Mastro called the Ecuador courts “a sham.”
Prominent trial lawyer John Keker, representing Donziger, claimed the Kaplan trial was pure intimidation and called the proceedings a “Dickensian farce” driven by Kaplan’s “implacable hostility” toward Donziger.
On the eve of the trial, Chevron dropped its financial claims, allowing Kaplan to dismiss the jury and decide the outcome himself. Then Chevron unveiled their star witness—Alberto Guerra, a disgraced former Ecuadorian judge removed from the bench for accepting bribes. In a Chicago hotel room, Chevron and Gibson Dunn lawyers rehearsed Guerra for 53 days.
In Kaplan’s court, Guerra claimed that Donziger had approved a “bribe” to an Ecuadorian judge and had written the final court ruling for the judge, allegedly transferred on a computer thumb drive. No corroborating evidence was ever offered. Guerra later admitted lying about these facts, and a forensic investigation of the Ecuadorian judge’s computer proved that Guerra had lied.
The entire story now appears fabricated. Donziger’s lawyers have attempted to locate Guerra and depose him, but the star witness has not yet been found.
“Chevron’s case,” said Donziger’s lawyer Andrew Frisch, “rested on the testimony of a witness who was paid over $1 million.” Frisch stated that Kaplan’s rulings “have been contradicted in whole or in part by 17 appellate judges in Ecuador and 10 in Canada, including unanimous decisions of the highest courts in both countries.”
Nevertheless, without a jury, Kaplan accepted Guerra’s testimony and found that Donziger had committed fraud. Finally, Kaplan ordered Donziger to turn over his computer and cellphone to Chevron. Since this order violated attorney-client confidentiality, Donziger refused until the court of appeals could decide the issue.
Kaplan charged Donziger with “criminal contempt” for refusing his order. However, the order and the contempt charge were so outrageous that the N.Y. prosecutor’s office refused to accept the case. Kaplan defied the state authorities and appointed a private law firm, Seward & Kissel—with commercial ties to Chevron—to act as prosecutor, which, in turn, ordered Donziger be placed under “pretrial home detention.”
Legal thuggery
An unnamed New York Second Circuit judge—presumed by Donziger and his lawyers to be Kaplan—filed a complaint against Donziger with the bar grievance committee in New York, which then suspended Donziger’s law license without a hearing. However, bar referee and former federal prosecutor John Horan called for a hearing and recommended the return of Donziger’s law license. “The extent of his pursuit by Chevron is so extravagant, and at this point so unnecessary and punitive,” Horan wrote, “he should be allowed to resume the practice of law.” Donziger responded that, “Any neutral judicial officer who looks objectively at the record almost always finds against Chevron and Kaplan. The tide is turning and the hard evidence about the extreme injustice in Kaplan’s court will be exposed.”
This case appears to be about bullying. Chevron is one of the wealthiest corporations in the world. The plaintiffs are poor, Indigenous, and campesino people with scarce access to money or lawyers. “Donziger came to our rescue,” says FDA president Luis Yanza. How big can high-stakes corporate bullying get? Donziger’s lawyers estimate the oil giant has spent over $2 billion on 2,000 lawyers, public relations teams, and private investigators.
At the dinner party at Donziger’s, I met supporters from around the world, from Amazon Watch and Global Witness, journalists, lawyers, and human rights advocates. “This case is not just about Steven’s fate,” said Simon Taylor, director of Global Witness in London. “I believe the injustice to him is intended to intimidate the rest of us, to chill the work of other environmental and corporate accountability advocates.”
American human rights attorneys Martin Garbus and Charles Nesson formed a support committee for Donziger with dozens of civil society leaders, including: Clive Stafford-Smith, founder of the prisoner-rights group Reprieve in London; Atossa Soltani and Leila Salazar, the founder and executive director of Amazon Watch; Lynne Twist, co-founder of the Pachamama Alliance working in the Amazon; renowned author John Perkins; and famed musician Roger Waters.
The tide may be turning for Donziger and the victims in Ecuador. In June 2019, Amnesty International asked the US Department of Justice to conduct a criminal investigation into Chevron’s and Gibson Dunn’s conduct, witness bribery, and fraud in the Ecuador pollution litigation
This past February, Prof. Ellen Yaroshefsky, director of the Monroe H. Freedman Institute for the Study of Legal Ethics at Hofstra University in New York, wrote that the Kaplan and Seward & Kissel prosecution of Donziger is flawed with conflicts of interest, financial ties to Chevron Corporation, and judicial bias.
In April, 29 Nobel laureates signed a letter stating, “(We) support Steven Donziger and the Indigenous peoples and local communities in Ecuador in their decades-long work to achieve environmental justice over pollution caused by Chevron…. Chevron and a pro-corporate judicial ally, US District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, manufactured ‘contempt’ charges against Donziger. (Chevron’s) goal is to intimidate and disempower the victims of its pollution and a lawyer who has worked for decades on their behalf.”
A month later, more than 475 international lawyers, bar associations, and human rights advocates criticized Kaplan’s ruling for persecuting Donziger “based on false witness testimony provided by Chevron, personal animus, and… to protect Chevron from a valid foreign court judgment.” The letter, from the US National Lawyers Guild and the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, urges an end to the pretrial house arrest of Donziger, noting “such arbitrary detention sets a dangerous precedent for human rights attorneys in the United States and around the world.”
On May 27, 2020, the Newground investment firm in Seattle, Wash., placed two proposals on Chevron’s 2020 proxy call, asking for governance reforms to bring its Ecuador issues to resolution, and prevent future human rights and pollution liabilities. The proposals were supported by actor Alec Baldwin, musician Roger Waters, and Nobel laureate Jody Williams.
On July 16, the European Parliament wrote to the US Congress asking the Congressional Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties to investigate Chevron’s treatment of Donziger, which the EU Parliament found “not consistent with what has traditionally been the strong support in the United States for the rule of law generally and for protection for human rights defenders in particular.”
Late at night, in the Donziger home, after the supporters had left, Donziger and his wife Laura sipped wine. “We’re not giving up,” Donziger said. “The only fraud in this case has been conducted by Chevron. Modern nations have comity relationships, formally respecting each other’s court decisions. We’re reviewing enforcement actions in Canada, Australia, and other jurisdictions. Chevron owes the money, and they can’t just run, hide, and fabricate stories to avoid paying. They’re persecuting me to try to change the public narrative, but they’re guilty. They committed the crime, they hurt people, they were proven responsible in a court of law that they chose, and they owe the money.”
…..As I write this, in mid-July, Donziger has been in home detention for 345 days, almost a year, longer than any lawyer in US history has ever served for a contempt charge.
How Did a Lawyer Who Took on Big Oil and Won End up Under House Arrest?
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 