Rainforest Rescue (Rettet den Regenwald)
Sources
In January 2020, Rainforest Rescue (Rettet den Regenwald, Germany) and one of Mighty Earth’s NGO partners, Center for International Policy, USA, have had to contend with a defamation lawsuit against them in the Hamburg Regional Court by a supplier to the Korindo conglomerate, a notorious Korean-Indonesian palm oil, logging, and wind tower manufacturing giant. The lawsuit is based on letters signed in October 2016 by Mighty Earth, Rainforest Rescue, and a coalition of other NGOs that addressed Korindo’s involvement in large-scale deforestation for palm oil in Papua, Indonesia. The lawsuit challenges some of the assertions in the letters and is demanding a retraction of those statements as well as seeking judicial penalties including hefty fines and imprisonment if those statements are made again. The first court hearing took place on 22 January 2021. We invited the company to respond; it did. A rejoinder from Rainforest Rescue is available here. On 21 February 2023, the dispute was settled based on the decision by a German court that the company could not sue the Center for International Policy.