President Biden must correct a grave injustice by granting a pardon to the renowned US environmental human rights lawyer Steven Donziger.

Findings by multiple courts show that between 1964 and 1990, Chevron deliberately dumped billions of gallons of cancer-causing oil waste onto Indigenous ancestral lands in Ecuador’s Amazon. The intentional dumping poisoned waterways that local communities depend on for their drinking water, bathing, and fishing.

The resulting environmental catastrophe in the Amazon has killed thousands of Indigenous peoples and farmers and decimated forest culture -- many of these communities still do not have access to clean drinking water.

In 1993, Steven Donziger courageously stepped up to help represent Ecuadorian villagers in a lawsuit against Chevron. Working with a team of Ecuadorian and international lawyers, he helped the villagers win a historic $9.5 billion pollution case against the oil giant after 18 years of hard-fought litigation.

But Chevron has not paid out one cent.

A Chevron spokesman even said the company would fight the Indigenous peoples until “hell freezes over” and then “fight it out on the ice.”

That was just the beginning of what turned out to be the most vicious corporate retaliation in US history. Chevron's goal was to completely destroy Mr. Donziger's reputation as both a lawyer and as an individual, and potentially put him in a position where he could be killed.

Chevron hired 60 law firms and used 2,000 lawyers to relentlessly and unjustly target Mr. Donziger and his vulnerable clients with what might be the most well-financed corporate retaliation campaign in history.

Chevron went after Mr. Donziger personally, orchestrating the unprecedented removal of his law license without a hearing. The company then privately targeted Mr. Donziger in the name of the US government in the nation’s first corporate prosecution. Chevron then forced him to spend close to three years under house arrest after he refused to give them his computer and confidential case file.

Mr. Donziger was then sentenced to six months in federal prison in a subsequent contempt trial overseen by a judge who demonstrated a “staggering” and “appalling” level of bias in favor of Chevron, according to five prominent jurists from the United Nations. The same judge who charged Mr. Donziger with contempt of court also appointed the prosecutor from a Chevron law firm, supervised the prosecution, and acted as the jury in the same case.

The legal proceeding against Mr. Donziger violated the rule of law and embarrassed the United States in the eyes of the world. The Working Group On Arbitrary Detention of the United Nations determined Mr. Donziger’s detention to be “arbitrary” and "illegal" under international law.

Chevron's vicious retaliation targeting Mr. Donziger continues to this day. Without a pardon, he could be arrested on a moment's notice at Chevron's request. The company has confiscated his passport and has refused to let him travel out of the country. Without a pardon, Mr. Donziger will never be able to enjoy the rights of full citizenship under the law.

By granting this pardon, President Biden will:

• Correct a grave injustice carried out by the fossil fuel industry to retaliate against those who protect vulnerable communities from toxic contamination;
  

• Protect a global human rights leader and his family from retaliation by the oil industry;
  

• Support the freedom of all lawyers and advocates to fight for climate justice without fear of corporate retaliation;
  

• Demonstrate unwavering support for free speech, the rule of law, and our system of separation of powers that does not allow one person to be prosecutor, jury, and judge in a single case as happened here.

In addition to a request for a pardon, we urge President Biden to start a comprehensive investigation into Chevron’s illegal and abusive retaliation campaign to evade compensating the people it harmed. As a result of Chevron’s failure to clean up its pollution, Amazon communities continue to face imminent risk of death and the decimation of their unique cultures.

A pardon of Mr. Donziger and justice for the Amazon communities is a matter of utmost legal and moral urgency.

If you are able, please consider contributing to Steven's crowdfunding campaign so we can build the resources we need to ensure the White House addresses this injustice without delay.