Amazon Watch Leaders Give Oxy Ultimatum: Clean Up Your Toxic Waste From Our Rainforest or Face Legal Action
LOS ANGELES, May 4 /PRNewswire/ — Indigenous communities from the Peruvian Amazon have told Occidental Petroleum (Oxy) to clean up its toxic waste from their tropical rainforest or face a major lawsuit.
The ultimatum, on the eve of the LA oil major’s annual general meeting for shareholders, came as a report revealed that Oxy had dumped nine billion barrels of toxic waste over 30 years of oil drilling, leaving indigenous Achuar children with harmful concentrations of lead and cadmium in their blood.
Compiled by EarthRights International, Amazon Watch, and Peruvian legal non-profit Racimos de Ungurahui, the report is likely to be a hot subject during the shareholder meeting today, which will be attended by two Achuar leaders.
Andres Sandi, President of an Achuar federation, said: “My people are sick and dying because of Oxy. The water in our streams is not fit to drink and we can no longer eat the fish in our rivers or the animals in our forests.”
Spiritual elder Tomas Maynas Carijano one of the potential plaintiffs, added: “We have told Oxy this week that they must talk with us in good faith about how they are going to clean up the toxic waste they left in our rainforest. If Oxy doesn’t respond satisfactorily and soon, I along with other Achuar are prepared to sue them for the damages they have caused us.”
FRIDAY’S PRESS BRIEFING AND PHOTO OP.
ERI, FECONACO, and AW will also be holding a sidewalk rally, press briefing and photo op with actors Benjamin Bratt, Daryl Hannah and Q’orianka Kilcher and indigenous leaders in traditional attire on Friday May 4, 2007 from 9:45am to 10:15am PDT and a press briefing at 12:00pm to give feedback from Oxy’s Annual General Meeting outside the Fairmount Miramar Hotel, 101 Wilshire Blvd., Santa Monica, California. (The AGM takes place in the hotel from 10:30am to 12:00pm).
A copy of the report can be viewed online at ERI’s and Amazon Watch’s websites:
http://www.amazonwatch.org/amazon/PE/block1ab/a_legacy_of_harm.pdf
http://www.earthrights.org/files/Reports/A_Legacy_of_Harm.pdf
Amazon Watch; EarthRights International
CONTACT: Riptide Communications, +1-212-260-5000, for EarthRightsInternational; or Simeon Tegel of Amazon Watch, +1-510-962-0195