Social unrest in Ecuador: crisis worsens
The economic and social crisis in Ecuador has gotten worse since the last two administrations of billionaire Daniel Noboa, who has raised the value-added tax and fuel prices while forgiving the tax debts of big companies, including his own family's. and, following the orders of the IMF, reduced the state budget for health, education, and social security and laid off 5,000 state workers, including public health personnel. At the same time, he has been unable to control crime, leading Ecuador to become one of the countries with the highest levels of crime and insecurity. In addition, unemployment, poverty, child malnutrition (40%), privatization, acts of corruption, and extractivism that destroys nature have increased.
This crisis was exacerbated by the decree that raised the price of diesel and, as a result, the cost of living; and, in response to the request by social organizations and indigenous peoples to repeal it, the government responded with a defiant and arrogant refusal, which led to demonstrations by trade unions in the streets and an indefinite strike by the indigenous movement, invoking the constitutional right to resistance and the international right to protest.
Like all Latin American governments aligned with the mandate of the IMF and Trump, Ecuador's government has responded for more than 20 days with attacks by the army and police, increasingly intensifying repression, with injuries and arrests, several of them kidnapped, transferred to cities far from their places of residence and without the right to a lawyer, even leading to the murder of an indigenous leader: Efraín Fuérez; and in recent days, invading communal territories, raiding and searching homes, hospitals, and health centers to capture the wounded; using military convoys with 2,000 troops who have besieged and kidnapped the city of Otavalo in the province of Imbabura. The Ecuadorian government has attempted to justify this large-scale military operation by saying that it is a “humanitarian” convoy, but videos, photographs, and other documentary evidence contradict the official discourse and the misinformation spread by the mainstream press. The results of this “humanitarian” incursion are the death of José Alberto Guamán Izama, the second fatal victim of the repression in Imbabura, and children suffocated by tear gas.
Therefore, the PHM-LA denounces this barbarity being committed by the Noboa government against the peoples of Ecuador, instructs its branches in all regions and countries of Latin America to ask their governments to demand that Ecuador cease the repression, and urges organizations such as Amnesty International, the International Red Cross, the Andean Health Commission, UNICEF, the IACHR, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), and the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UN) to URGENTLY urge the Ecuadorian government to respect international humanitarian law, warning it that failure to comply with the provisions of the treaties and conventions that guarantee the right to protest will result in the sanctions established therein.
The PHM-LA stands in solidarity with the brotherly people of Ecuador in defense of health and life!