Latin American diplomacy has been activated to the maximum with the crisis between Mexico and Ecuador. Both the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac) and the Organization of American States (OAS) met this Tuesday in extraordinary sessions to address the violent assault on the Mexican Embassy in Quito last Friday. In the first, the Mexican Foreign Minister, Alicia Bárcena, thanked the massive support of the countries in the region and asked everyone to support the lawsuit against Ecuador in the International Court of Justice that they will present in the coming days. They also seek to organize a meeting with all the heads of state, including the Mexican Andrés Manuel López Obrador and the Brazilian Lula da Silva. The Government of Daniel Noboa has responded to the accusations in the two meetings, has described Mexico's attitude as a provocation and has justified the invasion of the diplomatic legation as a necessary step to avoid impunity.
“Today Celac has a great responsibility, and the obligation to demonstrate to the international community that violations of international law are unacceptable, but above all that they have consequences,” said Bárcena in her speech at the extraordinary session. “It is time to see a united Celac.” Gabriela Sommerfeld, the Ecuadorian chancellor, also participated in that meeting, justifying the actions of the Noboa Administration and assured that the asylum granted to former vice president Jorge Glas was a provocation to her country. As a show of strength, López Obrador released on Tuesday afternoon a call that he had with the president of Brazil in which he expressed his complete solidarity. With the support of Da Silva, the Mexican Government will seek to take this matter “to the highest level” of regional diplomacy, Bárcena said.
After several weeks of escalation in bilateral tensions, the Ecuadorian police entered the Mexican diplomatic headquarters without permission and violently, mistreated and pointed weapons at Mexican officials and forcibly took away Glas, convicted in two cases of corruption. The attack was condemned by multiple countries around the world. Embassies turn out to be a kind of sacred place of international politics, and inviolable territory for local authorities. “What happened is unprecedented in the history of the region, neither in the worst moments, nor in the darkest moments, of such a clear violation of the most basic norms of diplomatic coexistence,” Bárcena added. “In this authoritarian act, a very dangerous threshold was crossed.”
The Ecuadorian authorities assured from the beginning that the assault was due to their suspicion that Glas was seeking to flee illegally, while waiting for safe passage from the Noboa Government to leave Ecuador. A version that Mexico always rejected and that the Mexican president tried to deny this Tuesday with the broadcast of a video in which a dozen Ecuadorian agents are seen entering the diplomatic headquarters by breaking the door and dragging Glas out, while they pointed with a weapon and threw the person in charge of the Embassy to the ground. “The Ecuadorian security forces attacked the physical integrity and dignity of the head of the Chancellery of our Embassy, Roberto Canseco, by pointing a firearm at him, harassing him and subduing him on more than one occasion,” added the chancellor.
Bárcena has also responded to the accusations from Ecuador, which has said that Mexico first violated the Vienna Convention by granting asylum to a person convicted of common corruption crimes. “Given Ecuador's arguments that Mexico would have abused diplomatic immunities by protecting a common criminal, I reiterate that Mexico strongly rejects this position,” she said. “It is false that we were planning an imminent escape. We are not equal, we were not going to proceed in that way in any way.” The Foreign Secretary explained that they had maintained a dialogue in good faith with Ecuador “at all times” and that they “carefully” studied the information that the Ecuadorian authorities gave them about the judicial case against the former vice president. “The behavior of the Government of Ecuador was disproportionate and cannot set any precedent.”
The Vice Minister of Human Mobility of Ecuador, Alejandro Dávalos, defended his country's actions this Tuesday at the OAS session in Washington as a necessary step to avoid “impunity” and prevent the former high official from managing to “evade justice.” . In the extraordinary session of the permanent council, Dávalos, representing Chancellor Gabriela Somerfeld, read a broad statement in which he assured that the invasion had been justified as the only way to “fulfill the sentences” against Glas for illicit association. for committing a crime and for bribery, the latter lasting eight years and imposed in 2020. The vice minister accused Mexico of having “promoted impunity” by having granted diplomatic asylum to the former vice president in its legation.
By hosting the former number two in the head of state, Mexico “detracted from these aspects, by allowing him to remain in the premises, preventing the functioning of the Ecuadorian judicial system” which, as Dávalos emphasized, had convicted Glas in trials with all kinds of guarantees. . The Mexican ambassador to the OAS, Luz Elena Baños, was not present at the meeting of representatives of the American countries.
“Although Mr. Glas was subject to enforceable sentences for common crimes, the Mexican embassy received him as a guest and he subsequently became considered an asylum seeker, thus managing to evade justice,” stressed the representative of the Government of Quito. in his intervention. The former vice president, he stressed, represented a real flight risk. Mexico, Dávalos declared, “has emphasized the importance and respect it gives to the institution of asylum. However, his attitude undermines and denaturalizes the figure of diplomatic asylum… by granting it to a convicted fugitive from Ecuadorian justice.”
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