Julia "Butterfly" Hill Deported From Ecuador After Pipeline Protest

The activist, Julia "Butterfly" Hill, best known for her two-year protest in which she lived atop a giant redwood tree in California, was taken without prior notice from the Provisional Detention Center, where she was held under arrest, to the Quito airport. Two hours later, the remaining detainees were released.

Hill said she had spent a long, tiring few days in Ecuadorian prison, but was not surprised to hear during the deportation hearing that the consortium Oleoducto de Crudos Pesados (OCP, heavy crude pipeline) Limited had sent a letter to the local police pressing for her deportation.

She also stated that the proceedings were illegal and that the rights of the people arrested had not been respected. But her greatest concern is the violation of "the rights of the communities devastated by oil exploitation," said Hill.

The oil pipeline targeted by the environmental activists is 540 km long and is to transport petroleum from the Ecuadorian Amazon region to the Pacific coast for refining and export.

The protesters were detained by the police as they staged a demonstration outside the offices of Occidental Petroleum, a member of the OCP Limited consortium, which is building the pipeline.

"The immigration police attacked us and beat us, and although some in our group were able to run, others were forced into the police cars," said Ricardo Buitron, member of the environmental organization Accion Ecologica.

"I was never told what I'm being charged with. I was never once read my rights. I was shown a piece of paper in Spanish but was refused a translator," said Hill.

"The only reason I am being deported is because I have lent my solidarity to the forests of Ecuador and the communities defending their lands and their basic human rights," she added.

Hill, famous for her efforts to protect the world's forests, said by telephone from Panama, where she was waiting while arrangements were being made for her return tot he United States, that her intention in Quito was to make it known that Occidental Petroleum is not complying with environmental standards in its construction of the pipeline.

On another front, several rural residents were arrested in the northeastern province of Sucumbios when they demanded compensation for the use of their lands for the pipeline route.

Since the beginning of the year, environmentalists from several countries have mobilized in protest against the Ecuadorian pipeline, citing its negative ecological and social impacts.

In March, special units of the police force arrested 17 members of Accion Ecologica and of the international environmental watchdog Greenpeace who had chained themselves to trees in the Mindo-Nambillo forest, a protected area 50 km northwest of Quito, to obstruct work on the pipeline.

Then, in May, environmentalists and landowners from the same forest were detained for standing in the way of the OCP route.

The activists showed the press the ownership certificates of an 840-hectare tract of land through which the pipeline was to pass. They demanded the removal of the heavy construction machinery from the area.

But OCP Limited claimed to hold "right of way," granted by the government, to build on privately held property.

In June, environmentalists, lawmakers and journalists arrived from Italy and took over the offices in Quito of the Italian petroleum firm Agip Oil to protest its role in the pipeline-building consortium.

Ecuador's President Gustavo Noboa has accused Accion Ecologica of obstructing a project that, according the government, would provide important economic benefits to the country.

Noboa stated in May 2001 that he would fight the environmentalists "in the trenches" if they continued to take action against the pipeline project.

"In the past, we knew what they were called. We knew they were the extreme left. Today, they are known as 'greens,' ecologists," said the president. In his opinion, it is just "a handful of idiots" protesting the pipeline construction.

Greenpeace, meanwhile, has taken action in Germany to prevent WestDeutche Landesbank (WestLB) from freeing up a $900 million loan to finance the pipeline in Ecuador.

The government of the western German state of North Rhine Westphalia, holder of 43 percent of the WestLB shares, announced it would postpone financing until it verified the environmental impacts of the pipeline construction.

Representatives of OCP Limited, consisting of the Canadian transnational Alberta Energy, Italy's Agip Oil, Spain's Repsol-YPF, the U.S.-based Kerr McGee and Occidental Petroleum and Argentina's Techint, assured that the project complies with the environmental norms stipulated by the World Bank.

But the World Bank even contradicted that statement. In a communique issued in December, it reported that the OCP was not following its environmental rules.