Quito, Ecuador – One week after a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report raised concerns about political and media freedoms in Ecuador, Shuar Indigenous leader Pepe Acacho, along with three others, were charged with terrorism and sabotage and arrested in a joint police-military action. The Correa administration and the national judges, by using the military and charges of terrorism against Ecuadorian citizens, are potentially setting dangerous precedents regarding the extent of executive powers in a fragile democracy.
In September of 2009 the Indigenous Shuar Nation of Ecuador’s southern Amazon staged protests over a proposed ley de agua (water law) that sought to privatize water sources throughout the country. The protests led to confrontations between the police – deployed by the Correa administration – in which more than 40 police officers were injured and one protestor, Bosco Wisuma, died.
Shuar Federation president Pepe Acacho was charged with terrorism, sabotage, and responsibility for the resultant death. Acacho, who was also director of the Shuar Federation’s radio station Radio Arutam, was accused of inciting violence through radio broadcasts in the Shuar language. Acacho’s defense has centered on arguing that the government translations of the radio broadcasts were, at best, poorly done, and at worst, maliciously executed.
In the more than year since the clashes, the case has remained in the judicial system and Acacho carried out his term as president of the Shuar Federation. On Friday, January 4, 2011, the Shuar Federation held their tri-yearly elections assembly to select new leaders. On the same day, the federal judge of the Morona Santiago province ruled against Acacho’s appeal and ordered that he be tried on the charges of terrorism and sabotage.
In the early morning of Monday, January 31, 2011, a force of police and military accompanied by helicopters swept in, arresting Acacho and the other three Shuar leaders, bringing them to jail in the city of Macas. Acacho and two others were then flown to the Garcia Moreno prison in Quito.
This action comes on the heels of an HRW report that red-flagged the Correa administration’s heavy-handed regulation of the media and the tendency to charge Indigenous leaders with crimes of terrorism as a violation of human rights and a threat to Ecuadorian democracy. The Correa administration reacted to the HRW report with dismissal, suggesting that it is meaningless and insignificant.
However, the arrest and imprisonment of Acacho and other indigenous leaders on charges of terrorism, based in restrictive communications regulation, is only the latest example of the type of human rights violations identified by the HRW. Importantly, the use of the military to pursue and arrest Ecuadorian citizens sets a dangerous precedent regarding the role of the military in domestic issues. The Correa administration has consistently employed the military to back its political will, as evidenced by the “state of exception” that extended from last September’s police strike through December. This alliance between executive and military poses challenges to the practice of full democracy in Ecuador.
As Delfin Tenasaca, President of the Confederación de Pueblos de la Nacionalidad Kichwa del Ecuador (ECUARUNARI), stated in a press conference on Thursday, February 3, 2011, “Who of us practices terrorism? The government wants to sew terror with its prisons, its police, its military – but we are not afraid.”
