Ecuador continues to study measures in the face of the unprecedented increase in violence in the country, which has forced the Army to be deployed in the streets to preserve security. President Daniel Noboa presented plans to build maximum security megaprisons, while his chancellor, Gabriela Sommerfeld, assured that the Government is analyzing allowing extraditions to the United States of Ecuadorians linked to organized crime. From abroad, the OAS reiterated its support for the country and the UN called for a security policy that guarantees respect for human rights.
Ecuador's President Daniel Noboa also asked lawmakers to consider increasing the value-added tax (VAT) to fund efforts to combat criminal gangs, as the Armed Forces ramp up operations in violent areas on Friday.
The measure announced this Friday, January 12, could make it possible to raise more than $1.3 billion a year and would come into effect in March. The funds would be used to finance weapons and equipment for security forces and improvements to the prison system, as well as payments owed to regional governments.
This is in addition to the package of urgent measures that President Noboa decreed in response to the violence of organized crime.
“It is the beginning of an urgent clean-up of the Ecuadorian penitentiary system, which has been controlled by mafias for decades.” This was one of the phrases that the president of Ecuador spoke on national television to announce the construction of maximum security prisons.
The construction of two new prisons will begin, which will be located in the Amazonian province of Pastaza and the coastal province of Santa Elena with capacity for 736 prisoners. This measure has been dubbed by some as the “Bukele model” in reference to El Salvador's megaprisons.
“We are not going to let a group of terrorists stop the country. Today I present the approved designs for the construction of the detention centers in Pastaza and Santa Elena,” said the Ecuadorian president.
These centers will have supermaximum, maximum and high security models; cellular and satellite signal inhibition; electronic systems with cutting-edge technologies; and digital and analog access control, as explained.
President Daniel Noboa tries to respond to the escalation of violence that Ecuador is experiencing. The country, long considered one of the safest in Latin America, is now mired in an unprecedented security crisis. Organized crime has strengthened due to the rise of a network for the export of cocaine produced in neighboring Colombia and Peru.
This week, the security crisis reached a fever pitch, when armed men took over a television station and the surroundings of a university in the country's second city: Guayaquil. Facts that led to the declaration of “internal armed conflict” by Noboa and the classification of some criminal gangs as terrorist organizations.
“This is one more step to be able to control terrorism and organized crime that needs to be reinforced with tougher laws, honest judges and the possibility of extraditing the most dangerous“Daniel Noboa reiterated.
International response to the security crisis in Ecuador
This Friday, in a resolution approved by the 33 member countries of the Organization of American States (OAS), the region committed to “monitor” the situation in Ecuador in order to offer political and technical support to Quito.
The document was approved in a session of the Permanent Council in which the Ecuadorian Foreign Minister, Gabriela Sommerfeld, spoke, describing what happened this week as a “serious crisis and social upheaval.”
In this way, Daniel Noboa's Administration received important support in its response to organized crime that involves extraordinary functions typical of a state of exception, which some political sectors such as Correismo oppose.
According to the OAS, Ecuador's priority now is to “restore public order, preserve the rule of law, respect for human rights, citizen security and the search for social peace.”
However, The United Nations (UN) was critical of the Noboa Government's response and emphasized the warning that Ecuador's security policy must be “proportional” and respect human rights.
Any restrictions on freedoms due to emergency measures issued by the president must comply with the “principles of legality, necessity, proportionality and non-discrimination,” the UN declared.
A warning along the same lines from Human Rights Watch (HRW), which considered that the Ecuadorian Government's declaration of an internal armed conflict “may lead to abuses” by the Armed Forces due to the equation of the gangs with parts of a traditional war confrontation.
““Trying to fight crime as if it were a party to an armed conflict has never been the appropriate response.”said HRW's Americas director, Juanita Goebertus.
For their part, some renowned analysts of the region such as José Miguel Vivanco, who is a senior researcher at the Council on Foreign Relations of the United States, call for radical actions by the Ecuadorian Government such as extradition to Ecuadorian prisons.
“It can be an extraordinarily effective instrument, as it was in Colombia to fight against organized crime that has the State of Ecuador in check,” said Vivanco.
In this regard, the Foreign Minister of Ecuador, Gabriela Sommerfeld, assured this Friday that her Government studies allowing extraditions to the United States of Ecuadorians, something prohibited by the Constitution. A little less than a year ago, Ecuadorians rejected reforming the Magna Carta to include the extradition of people linked to transnational crime, in a referendum held in the Government of Guillermo Lasso (2021-2023).
Families of the hostages demand answers from the Ecuadorian Government
Prison guards and police officers taken hostage with death threats represent one episode of the escalation of violence this week. Families of prison staff held hostage by inmates demanded action to rescue them, at a demonstration Friday outside the Cotopaxi government building.
Since the beginning of the week, 158 prison guards and 20 administrative employees were taken hostage in at least seven prisons during prisoner riots. But authorities have released little information about the condition of the hostages.
Videos have circulated on social media that supposedly show prison staff being subjected to extreme violence, including shootings and hanging, although the commander of the Armed Forces, Rear Admiral Jaime Vela, assured that no hostages had been killed.
The Ecuadorian Government faces 22 criminal gangs that are spreading terror in the streets. One of them is the organization 'Los Choneros', one of the oldest gangs in the country with around 8,000 men. Its leader, Adolfo Macías, alias “Fito”, disappeared on Sunday, January 7, from the Guayaquil prison.
With Reuters, AP and local media
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