We speak with human rights and environmental lawyer Steven Donziger, who was released Monday from nearly 1,000 days of house arrest as part of a years-long legal ordeal that began after he successfully sued Chevron on behalf of 30,000 Ecuadorian Amazonian Indigenous people. Donziger calls his misdemeanor sentencing and arrest “a retaliation play by Chevron and some of its allies in the judiciary,” meant to intimidate other human rights advocates and lawyers from pursuing environmental justice. “Chevron tried to use me as what I would say is a weapon of mass distraction so people wouldn’t focus on the environmental crimes they committed in Ecuador,” continues Donziger, who says, “I didn’t really understand freedom until it was taken away.”
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