As Delta &
Pine Land Company, a leading corporation in the field of
cottonseed genetics, production and sales, announced on
Monday the 22nd that it had acquired
Syngenta’s
global cottonseed business, including operations and assets
in India, Brazil and Europe, and cotton germplasm in the
United States, hundreds of inhabitants of a Paraguayan
community are still suffering the consequences of D&PL’s
irresponsible and unpunished actions.
In late 1998, the Paraguayan subsidiary of Delta &
Pine dumped 660 tons of expired cottonseed over a
one-and-half-hectare lot that was 100 meters away from a
public school and in the middle of an agricultural
community. To carry this out it used local hands, women
and young people, who worked without any protection.
The waste contained a total of over 4 tons of agrotoxic
substances and a modified bacteria grown in
laboratories. The
consequences were devastating, and the entire population
and the groundwater were contaminated.
Eric Lorenz,
US attorney for the company in Paraguay, ran away with
his family to the United States, where he is presently
working for a company that provides agricultural
services. He was
declared in contempt by a Paraguayan court, but an order
for his arrest and extradition was never issued.
The people of the community organized themselves and,
together with IUF, launched a very tough legal battle in
1998, under the utmost indifference of the successive
governments of Paraguay, who never even gave proper
medical assistance to the victims, in violation of their
most basic human rights.
Finally, a year and a half ago, and after numerous changes
in prosecutors and judges, two Paraguayan individuals
connected with Delta & Pine were found guilty and
sentenced to prison for a crime against the environment,
with the possibility of exchanging their prison sentences
for fines. The money
–approximately 30,000 dollars– would go to a fund, which the
community would determine what it would be used for.
The convicted individuals never went to jail, and they never
paid the fines either. In
fact, the justice system never actually demanded that they
pay the fines. Ana María
Segovia, a spokesperson for the affected community of
Rincon’í, explained to Rel-UITA that according to
information provided by environmental prosecutor Merlo, who
tried the case for six years, the enforcement of the
sentence is in the hands of prosecutors Beckerman and
Marchuc.
Called upon by Segovia, prosecutor Beckerman admitted that
she had had the case for the last year and a half but had
been unable to notify the convicted individuals of their
obligation to pay the fine because her office “had
insufficient funds to send such communication.”
In three months, the term granted by the court to enforce
its judgment will have expired, precluding any possibility
of complaint.
Delta & Pine
never paid anything to the hundreds of victims that should
have received damages as a partial compensation for their
definitely broken lives.
These are the ethics and social responsibility of a
corporation that controls almost all of the global
cottonseed market.
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Carlos Amorín
©
Rel-UITA
May 30, 2006 |
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