Hosni Marabak Resigns as President | Al Jazeera

Pro-democracy Protesters in Tahrir Square. Photo: AP

Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, has resigned from his post, handing over power to the armed forces.

Omar Suleiman, the vice-president, announced in a televised address that the president was “waiving” his office, and had handed over authority to the Supreme Council of the armed forces.

Suleiman’s short statement was received with a roar of approval and by celebratory chanting and flag-waving from a crowd of hundreds of thousands in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, as well by pro-democracy campaigners who attended protests across the country on Friday

The crowd in Tahrir chanted “We have brought down the regime”,  while many were seen crying, cheering and embracing one another. Mohamed ElBaradei, an opposition leader, hailed the moment as being the “greatest day of my life”, in comments to the Associated Press news agency.

“The country has been liberated after decades of repression,” he said.

“Tonight, after all of these weeks of frustration, of violence, of intimidation … today the people of Egypt undoubtedly [feel they] have been heard, not only by the president, but by people all around the world,” our correspondent at Tahrir Square reported, following the announcement.

“The sense of euphoria is simply indescribable,” our correspondent at Mubarak’s Heliopolis presidential palace, where at least ten thousand pro-democracy activists had gathered, said.

“I have waited, I have worked all my adult life to see the power of the people come to the fore and show itself. I am speechless.” Dina Magdi, a pro-democracy campaigner in Tahrir Square told Al Jazeera.

“The moment is not only about Mubarak stepping down, it is also about people’s power to bring about the change that no-one … thought possible.”

In Alexandria, Egypt’s second city, our correspondent described an “explosion of emotion”. He said that hundreds of thousands were celebrating in the streets. Pro-democracy activists in the Egyptian capital and elsewhere had earlier marched on presidential palaces, state television buildings and other government installations on Friday, the 18th consecutive day of protests.

ANGER AT STATE TELEVISION

At the state television building earlier in the day, thousands had blocked people from entering or leaving, accusing the broadcaster of supporting the current government and of not truthfully reporting on the protests.

Egypt's vice-president Omar Suleiman makes the announcement on Egyptian television that President Mubarak has stepped down from office. Photo: AP

“The military has stood aside and people are flooding through [a gap where barbed wire has been moved aside],” Al Jazeera’s correspondent at the state television building reported.

He said that “a lot of anger [was] generated” after Mubarak’s speech last night, where he repeated his vow to complete his term as president.

‘GAINING MOMENTUM’

Outside the palace in Heliopolis, where at least ten thousand protesters had gathered in Cairo, another Al Jazeera correspondent reported that there was a strong military presence, but that there was “no indication that the military want[ed] to crack down on protesters”. She said that army officers had engaged in dialogue with protesters, and that remarks had been largely “friendly”. Tanks and military personnel had been deployed to bolster barricades around the palace.

Our correspondent said the crowd in Heliopolis was “gaining momentum by the moment”, and that the crowd had gone into a frenzy when two helicopters were seen in the air around the palace grounds.

“By all accounts this is a highly civilized gathering. people are separated from the palace by merely a barbed wire … but nobody has even attempted to cross that wire,” she said.

As crowds grew outside the palace, Mubarak left Cairo on Friday for the Red Sea resort of Sharm al-Shaikh, according to sources who spoke to Al Jazeera.

In Tahrir Square, hundreds of thousands of protesters gathered, chanting slogans against Mubarak and calling for the military to join them in their demands.

Our correspondent at the square said the “masses” of pro-democracy campaigners there appeared to have “clear resolution” and “bigger resolve” to achieve their goals than ever before.

However, he also said that protesters were “confused by mixed messages” coming from the army, which has at times told them that their demands will be met, yet in communiques and other statements supported Mubarak’s staying in power until at least September.

ARMY STATEMENT

In a statement read out on state television at midday on Friday, the military announced that it would lift a 30-year-old emergency law but only “as soon as the current circumstances end”.

The military said it would also guarantee changes to the constitution as well as a free and fair election, and it called for normal business activity to resume.

Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Tahrir Square said people there were hugely disappointed with that army statement, and had vowed to take the protests to “a last and final stage”.

“They’re frustrated, they’re angry, and they say protests need to go beyond Liberation [Tahrir] Square, to the doorstep of political institutions,” she said.

Protest organizers have called for 20 million people to come out on “Farewell Friday” in a final attempt to force Mubarak to step down.

ALEXANDRIA PROTESTS

Hossam El Hamalawy, a pro-democracy organizer and member of the Socialist Studies Centre, said protesters were heading towards the presidential palace from multiple directions, calling on the army to side with them and remove Mubarak.

“People are extremely angry after yesterday’s speech,” he told Al Jazeera. ”Anything can happen at the moment. There is self-restraint all over but at the same time I honestly can’t tell you what the next step will be … At this time, we don’t trust them [the army commanders] at all.”

An Al Jazeera reporter overlooking Tahrir said the side streets leading into the square were filling up with crowds.

“It’s an incredible scene. From what I can judge, there are more people here today than yesterday night,” she said.

“The military has not gone into the square except some top commanders, one asking people to go home … I don’t see any kind of tensions between the people and the army but all of this might change very soon if the army is seen as not being on the side of the people.”

Hundreds of thousands were participating in Friday prayers outside a mosque in downtown Alexandria, Egypt’s second biggest city. Thousands of pro-democracy campaigners also gathered outside a presidential palace in Alexandria. Egyptian television reported that large angry crowds were heading from Giza, adjacent to Cairo, towards Tahrir Square and some would march on the presidential palace. Protests are also being held in the cities of Mansoura, Mahala, Tanta, Ismailia, and Suez, with thousands in attendance.

Violence was reported in the north Sinai town of el-Arish, where protesters attempted to storm a police station. At least one person was killed, and 20 wounded in that attack, our correspondent said.

DISMAY AT EARLIER STATEMENT

In a televised address to the nation on Thursday, Mubarak said he was handing “the functions of the president” to Vice-President Omar Suleiman. But the move means he retains his title of president.

Halfway through his much-awaited speech late at night, anticipation turned into anger among protesters camped in Tahrir Square who began taking off their shoes and waving them in the air.

Immediately after Mubarak’s speech, Suleiman called on the protesters to “go home” and asked Egyptians to “unite and look to the future.”

Union workers have joined the protests over the past few days, effectively crippling transportation and several industries, and dealing a sharper blow to Mubarak’s embattled regime.

Crowds cheer inside Tahrir Square. Photo: Dylan Martinez/Reuters

Reprint: Hosni Marabak Resigns as President | Al Jazeera

 

Oil Giant’s Liability for Amazon Disaster On Full Display In Public Document | ChevronToxico

A hand covered in crude contaminates from an open toxic pool in the the Ecuadorean Amazon rainforest near Lago Agrio. Photo: Caroline Bennett/Rainforest Action Network

Lago Agrio, Ecuador – Lawyers for the Amazonian communities suing Chevron have submitted the first part of their final written argument to the Ecuador court, outlining the evidence demonstrating Chevron’s liability in the $113 billion environmental damages lawsuit and the fraud behind the company’s primary defense of remediation.

The court filing – called an “alegato” in Ecuador – details in exacting detail how evidence gathered by independent experts, the plaintiffs, and from Chevron itself proves the case against the oil company. The lawsuit was first filed in U.S. federal court in 1993 but was shifted to Ecuador at Chevron’s request. The plaintiffs are tens of thousands of persons who live in area of Ecuador where Chevron operated several large oil fields from 1964 to 1990, reaping excess profits by using substandard practices.

Chevron has long argued, as its primary defenses at trial, that no contamination in Ecuador is linked to its operations, that any contamination that had been present was cleaned up in a “remediation” conducted from 1995-98, and that any contamination remaining in the region was the responsibility of Petroecuador, Ecuador’s state-owned oil company which took over the oilfields after Chevron abandoned them in 1992.

Despite Chevron’s claims, a summary of the plaintiff’s alegato concludes the legal release used by Chevron as a result of that remediation is “null and void” because it was based on numerous false and misleading representations by the company. Instead of actually cleaning up the waste in the area, the limited “remediation” was largely accomplished by simply covering a small number of waste pits with dirt and then using an inappropriate laboratory test that counted only a fraction of the actual contamination to “prove” that the remediation had been effective.

“The voluminous scientific evidence in the case is summarized clearly in this historic document,” said Karen Hinton, spokesperson for the plaintiffs. “This evidence proves overwhelmingly that Chevron is responsible for what is widely regarded as the world’s worst oil-related disaster. We encourage all interested persons to read the alegato and judge for themselves whether Chevron is telling the truth about its deliberate misconduct in Ecuador.”

The document concludes that Chevron is responsible for ongoing contamination that is harming the environment and human health to this day, even though the company fled Ecuador in the early 1990s and stripped its assets out of the country. The document concludes as follows:

• Chevron treated the environment “recklessly” and deliberately disposed of billions of gallons of toxic waste into rivers and streams over the 26-year period that it operated a large oil concession in Ecuador’s Amazon region. “These lax operational practices have had a devastating impact on the rainforest ecosystem and its inhabitants,” according to the document.
• Chevron dumped more than 16 billion gallons of chemical-laden “produced water” into streams and rivers over 70 years after the industry had stopped the practice in the United States due to its damaging environmental impacts.
• Chevron built and then abandoned more than 900 toxic waste pits filled with oil drilling byproducts such as barium, heavy metals, chloride, and acid – all of which need extensive remediation.
• Chevron polluted the air by flaring gas with no controls, spilled thousands of barrels of oil, had no spill response plan, and ordered the destruction of records documenting oil spills.

The plaintiff’s “alegato” also found that “there is irrefutable evidence of contamination” at every one of Chevron’s 45 well and oil production sites inspected by the parties during the trial phase of the case in the affected area, which is 1,500 square miles in size and covers a swath of rainforest roughly the size of Rhode Island. The chemicals and compounds found – all of which are toxic and some of which are known carcinogens – include barium, benzene, cadmium, chromium, copper, etheylbenzene, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, vanadium, xylene, and zinc.

The alegato also explains how it is Chevron – not PetroEcuador – that is responsible for the contamination given that the vast majority of pollution occurred at the time Chevron’s 356 well sites were drilled and operated by the American company. The legal concept of “joint and several liability” also imposes on Chevron responsibility for 100% of the damage it caused because of the substandard system it built and operated.

“The evidence makes it clear and unmistakable that Chevron is guilty,” the summary of the alegato concludes. “Guilty of polluting the rainforest with toxic sludge from lucrative oil drilling operations, guilty of a shoddy and haphazard cleanup operation, guilty of letting toxic waste continue to devastate the rainforest and its inhabitants’ lives, and perhaps worst of all, guilty of trying to cover it all up by destroying documents and making false accusations of fraud before courts in the U.S. and Ecuador.”

The submission is the first of three parts. The second and third parts – which deal with damages and issues relating to due process – will be released in the coming days. Earlier damages assessment reports submitted by the plaintiffs found the company could be liable for up to $113 billion in costs.

Chevron submitted its alegato to the Ecuador court in early January.

Full Display In Public Document | ChevronToxico