Ecuador has reinstated a state of emergency in seven of the country’s twenty-four provinces, where violence has increased in recent weeks, the government announced on Wednesday May 23, which had already decreed this exceptional regime in January throughout the territory.
The state of emergency, which allows the deployment of the army on public roads, was declared Wednesday for sixty days in the coastal provinces of Guayas, El Oro, Santa Elena, Manabi and Los Rios, and the Amazonian provinces of Sucumbios and Orellana, in addition to the canton of Camilo Ponce Enriquez (in the Andean province of Azuay), according to the presidency. According to the decree, there were in these areas “an increase in systematic violence perpetrated by organized violent groups, terrorist organizations and non-state actors”.
In January, the escape of a gang leader from a high-security prison sparked violent uprisings by drug trafficking groups that led to prison riots, attacks on the press, car bombs, temporary hostage-taking of some two hundred prison officers and police officers, as well as around twenty deaths.
Engaged in a fight against drug trafficking gangs, Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa then established a state of emergency, in force for the ninety days permitted by law, and declared the country in “internal armed conflict”.
Under the state of emergency, the army was ordered to neutralize around twenty criminal gangs linked to the Albanian mafia and cartels from Mexico and Colombia, described as “terrorists” and of “belligerents”. “On January 9, when we declared war on terrorist groups, we were in general chaos and, in five months, we managed to restore peace for the Ecuadorian people”declared Mr. Noboa in a video broadcast by the presidency.
“A second phase of the war”
The exceptional regime for the seven provinces is part of a “second phase of the war” against drugs and organized crime, he added. The Ecuadorian president affirmed that this war had “sectorized”. “The criminal gangs, faced with the military offensive, took refuge and entrenched themselves in seven provinces”where the capacities of public forces “have been exceeded”.
In these regions, dozens of people have been killed in several massacres in recent weeks.
Provinces under a state of emergency are those which “most need the freedom of action of the armed forces and the national police”reason why the rights to the inviolability of the home and correspondence were suspended, Mr. Noboa said. “Despite the significant risks we face, we are here to secure what we have gained and respond with determination and strength”he argued.
“Serious human rights violations”
Once considered an island of peace in Latin America, Ecuador, located between Colombia and Peru, the world’s two largest producers of cocaine, has been hit by a wave of violence in recent years, linked to feuding gangs. trafficking routes and power in prisons. Homicides there increased by 800% between 2018 and 2023, going from 6 per 100,000 inhabitants to 47. Since 2021, more than 460 inmates have been killed in prison.
The NGO Human Rights Watch (HWR) said on Wednesday that although crime is decreasing, extortion and kidnappings have increased and the security situation remains serious. In an open letter addressed to the Ecuadorian president, the organization denounces “serious human rights violations” committed by the security forces to face, according to him, the “internal armed conflict” opened by the gangs.
Calling on Mr. Noboa to return to the state of emergency, Juanita Goebertus Estrada, director of HRW for the Americas, reports at least “an apparent extrajudicial execution, several arbitrary arrests and numerous cases of ill-treatment in prison which, in some cases, could amount to torture”.