Quito, Ecuador – Ecuador will deport 14 environmental activists for protesting the construction of an oil pipeline while they were in the country on a tourist visa, authorities said Wednesday.
The government said in a statement that the demonstrators had violated their immigration status by promoting “disobedience of the law.” It did not specify when they would be deported.
The protesters were arrested along with three Ecuadoreans on Monday in the Mindo-Nambillo nature reserve, 20 miles (30 kilometers) northwest of the capital city of Quito. They had been camping there to block construction of a 300-mile (500-kilometer) pipeline to ship heavy crude from Ecuador’s oil-rich Amazon jungle to the Pacific coast.
Ecological Action, an activist group, has organized crews of protesters to camp in the reserve since early January.
Natalia Arias, a spokeswoman for the group, accused the consortium that is building the pipeline of orchestrating the arrests. She demanded the protesters be released “because they have committed no crime.”
The detainees included four Colombians, three Germans, two Frenchmen, two Italians, an Irishman, a Swede, an American and three Ecuadoreans, Ecological Action said.
The government has touted the dlrs 1.1 billion pipeline as Ecuador’s largest investment project in 30 years. Environmentalists have argued that the pipeline should be routed around the Mindo-Nambillo reserve.
