Nobel Laureate Rigoberta Menchu in DC to Protest Chevron

Nobel Peace Prize winner and internationally renown indigenous rights activist Rigoberta Menchu will address audiences in Washinton, D.C., Tuesday in a show of support for the Ecuadorean people's fight for justice against U.S.-based Chevron oil company.

Menchu will join activists and supporters of the victims of Chevron's contamination in the Ecuadorean Amazon who are gathering in the U.S. capital in front of the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).

Supporters, which include member of indigenous communities, have traveled from throughout the United States and Canada to participate in the action.

Chevron has requested that the ICSID hold a hearing to determine if the Ecuadorean state should pay the US$9 billion that Ecuadorean courts established should be paid to the victim's of the oil company's contamination in the Ecuadorean Amazon as a result of its operations.

Menchu will also speak alongside noted Mexican academic Ana Esther Ceceña at a forum in Washington.

See related: 10 Key Points on Ecuador’s Battle with Chevron

The activities coincide with Earth Day celebrations being held in the U.S. capital. The “We Deserve Justice” campaign addressed a rally of 300,000 people Saturday who had gathered on the Washington Mall. The campaign also had an information tent at the event where more than 2,000 people visited to learn about Ecuador's fight for justice.

Chevron has worked to evade justice and avoid paying the compensation ordered by the Ecuadorean courts, a ruling that was also confirmed by the Ecuadorean Supreme Court. According to the company's lawyers, the ruling is unenforceable because it was obtained through fraudulent means.

A separate court proceeding is also currently underway to determine if a U.S. judge's decision that deemed the Ecuadorean ruling invalid should be held up.

“With this ruling, Chevron is seeking to have the Ecuadorean State, and therefore, the people of Ecuador, pay the US$9.5 billion in compensation and damages to the land and inhabitants,” protest organizer Santiago Escobar told Telesur.

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 the years 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 Texco-Chevron was operating.