Today, disbarred human rights and environmental lawyer Steven Donziger was sentenced to six months in prison for criminal contempt. He has refused to turn over his laptop since 2014, when a federal judge ordered that measure in a racketeering case brought against Donziger by the corporation Chevron. Judge Preska, who presided over today’s sentencing, made it clear that Donziger’s previous efforts to hold Chevron accountable for polluting were irrelevant to his current predicament.

 “This case is wholly unconnected with responsibility Chevron may have regarding the oil spill in the Amazon rainforest…this case is about rule of law. All are equal under the law,” Preska said from the bench.

BREAKING: Flouting the U.N. decision ordering my release, Judge Preska sentenced me to 6 months in prison. Still on house arrest until the appeals court rules on my motion for release pending appeal. Picture is from rally this morning.

More details shortly. Stay strong. pic.twitter.com/ufXVhTTWJA

— Steven Donziger (@SDonziger) October 1, 2021

 Outside, the protesters were united in support of Donziger, who has waged a three-decade-long legal battle against Chevron for polluting Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest and killing potentially thousands of mostly indigenous Ecuadorian people.

“En pueblo, unido, jamás será vencido!” chanted the crowd. The rallying cry translates to “The people, united, will never be defeated,” and is an international symbol of the New Song Movement in South America.

Protesters gather outside the District Court in Southern Manhattan to support Steven Donziger. He was charged with criminal contempt after a lengthy legal battle with Chevron, regarding that company’s pollution of the Ecuadorian Amazon. Photo by Annie Iezzi

 Internationally, labor leaders, public interest attorneys, and civil rights leaders worry about the precedent set by the jailing of a human rights lawyer following his crusade against a multinational corporation.

 “It’s a kangaroo court,” said lifelong union organizer Ray Rogers. He pioneered the Corporate Campaign strategy, and he plans to employ this tactic against Chevron, as he has in his Killer Coke campaign against the Coca Cola company.

 “Right now, Chevron doesn’t want to clean up a mess they’ve created,” Rogers said “In a labor union case, the company doesn’t want to share power. Both things cost companies money, and companies don’t want that.”

 This view was only heightened by the U.N.’s Human Rights Council subgroup, the Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions, decision on September 24, which categorizes Donziger’s “deprivation of liberty” as “arbitrary.” Furthermore, Donziger has long claimed that the federal judge who found him to be in contempt, Judge Lewis Kaplan, enjoys secret investments in Chevron, which would have required that he recuse himself from the case.

 Abuses of power were on the minds of many protesters, including one wearing a sparkly cape covered in pins. 

“I’m mad that all this time grownups in power haven’t used their power to help Steven Donziger,” said 11-year-old climate activist Avery Tsai into a bullhorn.

 Donziger attempted to hold Chevron accountable for the abuses of the company it purchased, Texaco, an American oil brand. Though Chevron is an American multinational company, the case was transferred to the judiciary of Ecuador prior to 2011.

According to Ecuadorian court findings, for three decades Chevron dumped billions of gallons of oil and refuse onto Indigenous ancestral lands in Ecuador to conserve costs. In 2011, the same court ordered that Chevron pay $19 billion to remediate damages, a penalty that was lowered to $9.4 billion on appeal and then dismissed in light of Donziger’s racketeering charge.

Victor Salazar, an Ecuadorian immigrant and member of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, joins the protest in support of Steven Donziger. Photo by Annie Iezzi

 “I used to live there,” said Ecuadorian immigrant and member of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, Victor Salazar. “I was a child, so I didn’t realize the intensity of the situation until much later in life, but I saw my cousins’ pets: the dogs would come in with oil on their paws, and the water was so polluted.”

 Waving an NYTWA flag, Salazar stressed the importance of unity. 

“It’s about unity, and that’s why I’m here. If our struggles are united, we fight, and we don’t give up, we will make a difference in this world,” he said.

 As for Donziger, today’s sentencing was a defeat on multiple levels. He will spend the next six months in prison, he will remain disbarred, and he will not see Chevron pay its dues to the people of Ecuador.

 “I respect the law,” he said in response to Judge Preska’s implication that he did not. “I have been fighting through the law for the people of Ecuador for years.”

 Donziger is still on the hook for attorneys’ fees totaling $3.4 million, payable to Chevron.

The post Judge Sentences Human Rights Lawyer for Criminal Contempt appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

In Pursuit of Spiritual Freedom from Pavement Pieces on Vimeo.

The post In pursuit of spiritual freedom appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

Children sponsored by the Restevek Freedom Alliance. Credit: Restevek Freedom Alliance.

There are currently 350,000 child slaves living in Haiti, according to U.N. estimates. The Haitian Creole term for these children is Retseveks.

Resteveks are sent away by parents who cannot afford to take care of them, to live with other more well off families. The families are then supposed to provide the children with a good home and an education in exchange for help with household chores. However, that’s not always the case.

“I would say that the preponderance of the homes of the treatment of [resteveks] is not good at all and a good percentage are abusive,” said Ellen Donahue, the U.S. Director of the Restevek Freedom Alliance, a non-profit organization based in Windham, Conn., “A very small percent might be okay.”

Haiti ranks second on the 2013 Global Slavery Index of countries where human trafficking is an issue. Child slavery is a significant part of the problem.

Ruthly Cadestein, 22, is a Haitian-American from Union, N.J. She plans to visit Haiti someday with the intention of advocating for Resteveks and other victims of human trafficking,

“My goal is to go to law school and get my JD and MBA and work with certain cases connected with human trafficking,” she said, “I want to speak for people who can’t speak for themselves.”

Donahue also said that Resteveks suffer from emotional, physical, and sexual abuse at the hands of their patrons and don’t get the opportunity to go to school or do things that a regular child would get to do.

“Many of them have no freedom to just be a kid,” she said.

Resteveks work as “house slaves” doing a variety of different types of labor. They are expected to work in the fields, go to the market to get food, clean the house, as well as get up early in the morning to fetch water from the common water supply in the villages.

“They’re often dragging huge, heavy pails of water,” Donahue said.

Cadestein finds all this quite ironic, since Haiti was the first colony to abolish slavery, yet it still exists there.

“I always say that Toussaint Louverture would probably be turning in his grave if he saw what was going on on the soil of Haiti,” she said, referring to a Haitian military general who fought for Haiti’s freedom and to eradicate slavery.

The devastating poverty in Haiti forces many parents to send their children away, because they simply can’t afford to keep them. Cadestein thinks that these parents should not be condemned for making the choice to send their children away.

“I always say it’s not good to judge at all, because you never know what someone else is going through”, she said, “When you’re forced to think about which child you’re going to give away, that’s unbelievable.”

The Restevek Freedom Alliance is working to make a change little by little, so parents won’t have to resort to these measures. The organization has so far raised $50,000 to build homes and schools for former Resteveks and children who are at risk. The money is also used to provide the children with a variety of other things such as school uniforms and supplies, field trips, bikes to get to school and back as well as toys.

“I think we’re a probably a tiny drop in a big bucket,” Donahue said. “However, for our 32 children, their lives are improving.”

Donahue travels to Haiti every few months to and gets a chance to spend time with some of these children. She and other members of the organization play with the children, work on projects together as well as take part in educational activities.

“I think they’re able to be kids,” Donahue said, “It’s not like we shower them with gifts. We just allow them to play, which I don’t believe that the children who served as Resteveks were able to do at all.”

Cadestein on the other hand has never been to Haiti, but still feels a strong connection to the country and is passionate about this issue. She is thankful that her family immigrated to the U.S., that she was given so many opportunities and wants the same for children living in Haiti.

“I am happy that we’re here, but at the end of the day, it is your mother home and when your mother home is suffering and crying, you feel that pain too,” she said, “Those people, they’re your brothers and sisters. They come from the same baseline as you.”

The post Tackling child slavery in Haiti appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

A Silent Genocide from Pavement Pieces on Vimeo.

Ali Jafri last saw his uncle, Dr. Mohammad Jafri, in 1993. One year later Dr. Jafri was murdered at gunpoint by two men riding by on motorcycles, according to family members.

“I just couldn’t believe it,” Ali Jafri of Long Island, N.Y. said, “I mean he’s so young. He’s so loving. It’s just not possible and he has four children.”

Ali Jafri’s uncle was targeted because he was a Shia Muslim living in Pakistan. A small minority, Shias make up only 20 percent of Pakistan’s population. They have been targeted by extremist terrorist groups such as the Taliban, Siphah-e-Sahaba, and Lashkar-e-Jangvi, who have been persecuting the Shia for their beliefs.  While this is not a new a problem in Pakistan, the number of killings have increased over the last two years.

According to Human Rights Watch, more than 800 Shias have been killed since 2012. In January and February of this year, a series of deadly bombings in the Northwestern city of Quetta killed over 150. In another bombing in March in the southern city of Karachi, over 40 people were killed, as reported by Pakistani media. Several more people were killed in a more recent bomb blast in Karachi in November.

Dr. Zaheer Jafri (no relation) is a cardiologist who resides in Monroe, N.Y. His older brother and cousin were killed in Quetta and another one of his cousins was killed last November in a bombing in Rawalpindi, a city located nine miles from the capital.

“It was really shocking news for me because I just met (my brother) six months ago and that was the happiest time for us,” he said.  “Within two months, I lost three family members very close to me.”

Dr. Zaheer Jafri’s brother and cousins left behind their wives and several children. When he went to Pakistan to attend his brother and cousin’s funeral, he met many devastated families in Quetta who had also lost family members.

“The people of that city were very sorrowful,” he said. He saw families sitting outside for three days with the dead bodies of their loved ones, refusing to bury them in an effort to pressure the government to address the situation.

The persecution of Shias in Pakistan has ignited a cry of outrage in the Pakistani-American Shia community. Rallies and protests were held earlier this year in many cities including New York City, Washington D.C., Chicago, Atlanta and Dallas.

Many blame the Pakistani government for not providing enough security and protection for Shias and also for failing to bring the terrorists responsible to justice.

“They should be dealt as criminals and they should be prosecuted as well as put in jail, so further incidents should not happen,” Dr. Zaheer Jafri said.

The Al-Khoei Foundation is one of the largest non-profit Shia Muslim organizations in the world. The branch located in Jamaica, Queens has been active in raising awareness about the Shia genocide as well as raising money for victims of anti-Shia violence.

“It’s an ideological war against not just the Shia, but against everyone who loves freedom, who believes in freedom of speech and being able to express and profess your faith the way you want to,” said Meesam Razvi, a United Nations representative for the foundation.

Razvi has brought up the issue during meetings at the U.N., but said there is very little that they can do in terms of putting a stop to the genocide. The U.N. can pass resolutions, but they do not have much power to enforce them.

“I think it really comes down to individual countries as to how they enforce their obligation of protecting the fundamental human rights of minorities living among themselves,” he said.

Razvi has also met with Pakistani ambassadors in Washington D.C. to discuss the issue, but said their attitude has been “unresponsive”.

“We’ve found them to be very complacent,” Razvi said. “They’ve hardly ever done anything about it.”

Ali Jafri, a Canadian who relocated to Long Island several years ago has had a different response to the genocide. Instead of participating in rallies and protests, he practices yoga and writes poetry, which help him deal with his feelings about the issue.

“I feel like yoga is a release for me and it also reminds me that those people who killed my uncle and those people who kill anybody, they’ve just forgotten who they are,” he said.

Ali Jafri believes that if people practiced yoga, they would not be prone to violence.

“Because if they were really tapped in to who they really are, they would never want to harm anything or anybody regardless of religion, belief, race, gender, sexual orientation – anything, so yoga has been a huge therapy for me and poetry allows me to express any anger or frustration that I have.”

Dr. Zaheer Jafri makes donations to the families of victims. He said that many of the people who have been affected especially those residing in Quetta are quite poor and have lost the main bread winner of their family, leaving many widows and orphans to fend for themselves.

Dr. Zaheer Jafri is also a member of Imamia Medics International (IMI), an organization of doctors based in Princeton, N.J. IMI has helped pay for school fees, books, and clothing for the children of victims.  IMI members have also traveled to Pakistan after some of the bombings took place to help the wounded.

Even as the violence against Shias in Pakistan continues everyday, both Ali Jafri and Dr. Zaheer Jafri remain hopeful that a day will come when this oppressed minority group can live more peacefully.

“Hope is always there,” Dr. Zaheer Jafri said. “Whether it will change or not is yet to be seen.”

The post Killing of Shia people in Pakistan takes toll on Pakistani American families appeared first on Pavement Pieces.