Since the escape at the beginning of January of public enemy number one Adolfo Macias, alias Fito, leader of the powerful Choneros gang, the country has been in a state of emergency and a state of internal war has been decreed by President Noboa. Tens of thousands of soldiers and police are on the streets and in the country’s prisons to regain control. And the recovery is vigorous, sometimes to the detriment of human rights.
3 mins
with our correspondent in Quito, Eric Samson
Access to prisons is still prohibited to the press but numerous videos are circulating on social networks, as usual with a lot of misinformation. For example, a video shows detainees on the ground while tear gas and hot water are thrown into their faces. It appears to be a setup. Others, however, are real, the source is known to us, such as the one showing detainees in boxers, bare chests, hands on their heads going up a staircase with unusually rude soldiers, who force them to shout ” Ecuador, Ecuador ! » as if to show that the State is back and that the gangs no longer make the law.
President Noboa’s popularity on the rise
It is very difficult to find people who do not approve of the hard way. The president’s popularity rating Daniel Noboa is 80% because people appreciate that, for example, the Police and the military evacuated entire truckloads of firearms, knives, drugs, televisions, computers, cell phones, cable TV antennas from prisons , industrial cookers, video game consoles and even sets of keys to their cells…
✅️Results of military operations carried out on 28 December 2024, by the Armed Forces of the Ecuador at national level.
Download the document and the photos in the following enlace.📄https://t.co/cat9sw2Xgx pic.twitter.com/X9lK3qgWy6
— Fuerzas Armadas del Ecuador (@FFAAECUADOR) January 29, 2024
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Billy Navarrete, executive director of the Standing Committee for the Defense of Human Rights, recognizes that his message is finding it increasingly difficult to get across. “ Since January 9, the escape of “Fito” the point of view that we have defended for 40 years is going through its most difficult moment. We too are victims of violence, but any message defending human rights, particularly of detainees, earns us insults and threats. A colleague recently received death threats after his photo was posted on social media “.
Return to calm in prisons?
It is mainly the families of detainees who protest against this policy of “ mano dura”. Their loved ones are treated like animals, according to them. We met them last Wednesday in front of the Guayaquil prison. They had not had contact with their loved ones for a week since all cell phones had been seized and all visits suspended.
Let us point out, however, that the American Forces have published an official video in which no one shouts. She wants to demonstrate that the prisons are now held, that all privileges have been abolished, that the inmates previously extorted by the gangs are calmer, which is probably true.