The president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, extended this Thursday for 30 days the national state of emergency that has been in force since last January due to “serious commotion” and “internal armed conflict” decreed due to the spiral of violence that shook the country. country at the beginning of the year.
“The declaration of a state of emergency is maintained throughout the Ecuadorian territory to guarantee public order, social peace and peaceful coexistence,” said the Communication Secretariat of the Presidency in a statement, after the signing of the decree by the president. .
The state of exception, with which the Government began to consider organized crime gangs as terrorist groups and non-state belligerent actors, contemplates the deployment of the Armed Forces in support of the Police, especially in the militarization of prisons, dominated many of them by criminal gangs, and which were declared “safety zones.”
It also implies the suspension of fundamental rights such as the inviolability of the home and freedom of assembly, as well as freedom of movement at night through a curfew and the inviolability of correspondence in the case of prisoners. He also declares prisons “safety zones.”
The extension of the measure is the application of a “traffic light” system for the night curfew, depending on the levels of insecurity in each municipality or province.
The document also applied the considerations issued by the Constitutional Court of Ecuador in its opinion in which it declared the declaration of this state of exception as constitutional.
Likewise, the decree recalled that public servants “will be responsible for any abuse they have committed in the exercise of their powers during the validity of the state of emergency,” after several complaints of abuses and violations of human rights have arisen. by law enforcement.
During the first sixty days of the state of emergency, a dozen alleged criminals classified as “terrorists” by the Government have been killed, while three police officers have allegedly died at the hands of these gangs.
More than 11,000 arrests have also been made and more than 64 tons of drugs have been seized, as well as more than 3,300 firearms, nearly 4,500 knives and more than 24,000 explosives.
On January 8, Noboa, who had not been in power for even two months, decreed a state of emergency for sixty days, in the face of a series of attacks and violent actions by criminal gangs, which increased the following day with the taking of a TC Television channel by an armed group during a live broadcast.
At the same time, a series of simultaneous riots took place in different prisons from which nearly 90 prisoners escaped and where some 200 guards and police remained kidnapped for nearly a week.
Days before, drug trafficker José Adolfo Macías Salazar (‘Fito’), leader of Los Choneros, considered one of the most dangerous gangs in the country, with alleged links to Mexican cartels, had escaped.
These episodes occurred when the Noboa Government was preparing to implement its “iron fist” policy to regain control of the prisons, many of them internally dominated by criminal gangs, whose rivalries have left more than 450 prisoners murdered since 2020. in a series of prison massacres.
Prison violence took to the streets to such an extent that Ecuador became one of the most violent countries in Latin America in 2023, with 45 intentional homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. EFE
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