Justice Served in Ecuador! | Amazon Watch
Amazon Watch

Justice Served in Ecuador!

Earth defenders win amnesty from unfair charges

March 11, 2022 | Sofía Jarrín | Eye on the Amazon

On Thursday, March 10, we celebrated a major human rights victory in Ecuador! With 99 votes, the Ecuadorian Congress granted amnesty to 268 people, primarily Indigenous defenders who had been criminalized and persecuted for their work to defend their territories, rights, and nature, including leaders from Indigenous organizations Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) and Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon (CONFENIAE). 

Our longtime allies Acción Ecológica, with support from Ecuador’s Human Rights Alliance, Land Is Life, Amazon Watch, and other human rights and environmental organizations, led the process to secure amnesty. Our team in Ecuador focused our support on documenting and defending 40 Shuar Indigenous people targeted for their resistance to mining activity in the Cordillera del Cóndor area in Ecuador’s southern Amazon, where we have been working together with the Shuar Arutam federation (PSHA) for five years.

The amnesty exonerates Earth defenders including Gabriela Fraga, Nancy Simba, Ángel Punina, Javier Ramírez, Jovita Curipoma, the family of Víctor Guaillas, and dozens more young people and elders from charges stemming from protests against extraction – a right guaranteed in Ecuador’s constitution. It also resolves charges brought against Jamie Vargas, former president of CONAIE, and current president Leonidas Iza, along with CONFENIAE leaders Marlon Vargas and others on trumped-up charges of terrorism and inciting violence related to the October 2019 Indigenous uprising that shut down the country over proposed neoliberal economic reforms. 

In a press statement, Ecuador’s Human Rights Alliance (DDHH) emphasized the vote’s importance: “Through the assembly members, [Ecuador] has recognized the fundamental role of human rights defenders in a democratic society. Granting them amnesty means removing at least one of the obstacles they have in their defense work. It is a symbolic reparation; it is their right to truth and justice.”

This is a monumental accomplishment for our Indigenous partners on the ground and an example of the strength of our campaigns in solidarity with Ecuador’s social and environmental movements. By following the lead of Indigenous organizations like CONAIE, CONFENIAE, and the PSHA, we are creating systemic change from the ground up. 

Amazon Watch played a supportive role in this victory as members of Ecuador’s Human Rights Alliance. Our team has been focused on securing recognition for the work of human rights defenders over the last few years, providing legal, advocacy, and communications support. 

This victory comes a year after our team led the writing and compilation of a groundbreaking report with DDHH documenting 449 case studies of Ecuadorian Earth defenders increasingly under threat. The report, published by a coalition of nineteen human rights organizations, including Amazon Watch, maps systematic rights violations against rights defenders including intimidation, threats, harassment, prosecution, persecution, and even assassinations, committed principally by the armed forces, national police, and public officials. This report was the first of its kind in Ecuador, revealing the intensifying dangers that rights defenders face as part of their struggles to protect and defend their territories, autonomy, and identity, and shone a spotlight on government and industry complicity to undermine their vital work. Most importantly, it outlined the rights abuses at the hands of the government and provided concrete recommendations to remedy the rights violations. 

The report helped us pressure Ecuadorian agencies such as the Ombudsman’s Office, the Prosecutor’s Office, and the Human Rights Secretariat, to generate a protection policy for defenders. Unfortunately, the administration of Guillermo Lasso has demonstrated no political will to fulfill Ecuador’s international obligations to protect the work of human rights defenders, particularly defenders of the environment.

“We have not committed any crime, we are defending our territory, the natural resources of all Ecuadorians. We guarantee food sovereignty, the protection of land and water”

Ángel Punina, Indigenous leader and farmer from La Esperanza

Oil, mining, agribusiness, and the water sector are consistently the biggest drivers of attacks against rights defenders and pose significant threats to the protection of the Amazon. Therefore, the work of human rights and environmental defenders in Ecuador, one of the world’s most biodiverse countries, is vital to the protection of critical natural ecosystems such as the Amazon rainforest.

That is why we celebrate the decision of the National Assembly of Ecuador, and the work of the assembly representatives of Pachakutik, the Indigenous political party, who moved this forward. This latest victory for land defenders and Indigenous communities deals another blow to extractive industries in Ecuador. It is also vindication for the social justice advocates who, exercising their right to protest, were criminalized for their participation in the 2019 national strike. Although the new government of Ecuador is ready to accelerate the extraction of natural resources, these recent legal decisions should serve as a warning to international investors that in Ecuador, human rights organizations, and social movements are ready to defend their rights to life and dignity – and will be victorious.

But above all, we celebrate the defenders who finally achieved justice and recognition that their struggle is legitimate and a fundamental right in any democracy.

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