Human Rights Watch (HRW) sent a letter this Wednesday to the president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, to warn that his decision to elevate the fight against organized crime to the category of “international armed conflict” lacks support and has contributed to “serious human rights violations” by the Police and the Armed Forces.
Protests in Ecuador.
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Human Rights Watch asserted that Noboa’s decision to elevate the fight against organized crime to the category of “internal armed conflict”, with which he began to classify criminal gangs as “terrorist groups”, lacks legal basis and “could open the door to human rights violations.”
Noboa’s decision to elevate the fight against organized crime to the category of ‘internal armed conflict’ lacks legal basis and could open the door to human rights violations
“According to international law, the existence of an armed conflict depends on an objective analysis of criteria on the level of organization of armed groups and the intensity of hostilities,” explained HRW, for whom the Noboa Government “has not presented evidence sufficient for confrontations with criminal groups to constitute a non-international armed conflict”.
The declaration of the “internal armed conflict” in Ecuador was accompanied by a Exception status through which Noboa militarized the prisons, one of the epicenters of the country’s violence crisis, as many of them were controlled by criminal gangs, and also allowed the Armed Forces to patrol and participate alongside the Police in operations against crime organized in the streets.
Riot in prison in Ecuador.
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Possible extrajudicial execution
Human Rights Watch interviews with witnesses, family members, and lawyers of the victims, along with verified videos and photographs, and court documents, contradict the Army’s version.
Many of the people reported as detained were not brought before the Prosecutor’s Office and appear to have been detained for brief periods outside the legal process and, according to videos and photographs published on the Internet and verified by Human Rights Watch, subjected to reprimands, beatings and other degrading treatment.
Arbitrary arrests in Ecuador (reference image).
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Torture cases in prison
HRW also denounced that “the military, which has controlled Ecuadorian prisons since January, has kept detainees incommunicado, sometimes hindering their right to consult with lawyers or obtain medical assistance”.
Soldiers appear to be responsible for multiple cases of ill-treatment and some cases of torture in prison
Noboa called complainants ‘antipatria’
“The government must respond to the violence with an effective security policy that protects Ecuadorians and is respectful of human rights,” said HRW Americas director Juanita Goebertus.
Homicides in Ecuador increased by 574.30% between 2019 and 2023which raised the homicide rate from just over 7 to more than 47 per 100,000 inhabitants, according to figures from the Ecuadorian Organized Crime Observatory.
And although homicides fell by around 27% under the state of emergency, “extortion and kidnappings have increased, and the recent murders of three mayors and the director of a prison show that the situation remains serious,” HRW concluded.
Police investigate the vehicle with bullet holes in which the prosecutor César Suárez was.
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