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Rigoberta Menchu Witnesses Chevron's Damage in Ecuador

Source: telesurtv.net
The Nobel laureate is in the Ecuador's Amazon region as part of her continuing efforts to support the nation against Chevron. Nobel Prize for Peace winner and internationally renowned indigenous rights activist Rigoberta Menchu paid a visit on Wednesday to the area of Ecuador's Amazon affected by the United States-based oil company Chevron-Texaco.

"Just being here allows me to understand the suffering of the Amazonian people. This is the result of a truth that cannot go unpunished," Menchu was quoted as saying by Ecuador's state news agency El Telegrafo.

Menchu's visit comes as part of her continuing efforts to show solidarity with the Ecuadorean people against the oil giant and its denials of the damages its explorations in the country's amazon region had caused on the communities living there. Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa thanked Menchu for her support in the fight against the U.S. company. "It's a great help. The more people, especially with the prestige and moral creditworthiness of Rigoberta Menchu, can denounce to the world what this company did in our country, the better," the president said, quoted by teleSUR. In April, Menchu participated in a demonstration in the U.S. capital Washington, D.C., along with thousands of activists and supporters of the victims of Chevron's contamination in the Ecuadorean Amazon. The protest took place in front of the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes. Oil company Texaco — which merged with Chevron in 2001 — is accused of causing one of the world’s greatest environmental disasters as a result of its oil exploration in the area between 1964 and 1990. In what activists have dubbed the “Amazonian Chernobyl,” thousands have died from a cancer spike following the contamination of the soil and water supplies in the Ecuadorean Amazon where Texaco-Chevron was operating.

Date : 04/06/2015

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