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1994-05-02
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<text>
<title>
Ecuador: Human Rights Watch
</title>
<article>
<hdr>
Human Rights Watch World Report 1992
Americas Watch: Ecuador
</hdr>
<body>
<p>Human Rights Developments
</p>
<p> Compared to many other Latin American countries, Ecuador is
rarely the focus of scrutiny for its human rights practices.
Rodrigo Borja Cevallos, who assumed the presidency in 1988, has
expressed strong verbal support for human rights, and his
government has granted domestic rights monitors significant
access. Nonetheless, human rights abuses continue to be
frequent, persistent and serious in this Andean nation.
</p>
<p> The most systematic problem is torture and other physical
mistreatment of common criminal suspects by agents of the
National Police Criminal Investigative Service (SIC). In
September 1991, an international commission investigating the
January 1988 disappearance of two young brothers reported that
torture and physical mistreatment are a routine aspect of SIC
operations. ("Informe Restrepo: Arrancados del Hogar,"
supplement to Hoy (Quito), September 4, 1991, p.5.) This finding
confirmed long-standing allegations by local human rights
organizations.
</p>
<p> Until recently, the government had failed to explain the
disappearance of the two brothers, Pedro Andrés and Carlos
Santiago Restrepo Arismendi, ages fourteen and seventeen. They
were last seen in public in Quito on January 8, 1988, when they
left home in their parents' vehicle to see a friend off at the
airport. Andrés Vallejo, former minister of government and
police under President Borja, was censured in October 1990 by
a majority of the National Congress for "having failed to act
upon or take decisions that would have led to clarifying the
arbitrary arrest, torture and disappearance of" the two minors.
(Andean Newsletter, November 12, 1990.)
</p>
<p> After several failed attempts by Ecuadoran and international
investigators to clarify the facts of the case, on July 13,
1990, President Borja created a Special (International)
Investigative Commission, comprised of six individuals: Dr.
Toine van Dongen, as representative of the United Nations; Dr.
Gustavo Medina de López, attorney general of Ecuador; Dr.
Apolinar Díaz Callejas, a former government official in Colombia
and the founder of the Colombian Committee for the Defense of
Human Rights; Dr. Juan de Dios Parra, secretary general of the
Latin American Association of Human Rights; Dr. Isabel Robalino
of the Ecuadoran Episcopal Conference; and Dr. Guillermo
Arismendi Díaz, an uncle of the disappeared boys, representing
the family.
</p>
<p> On September 2, 1991, the commission released its
conclusions: the Restrepo brothers disappeared at the hands of
members of the National Police; the police were negligent in
their efforts to investigate the case and some officers were
involved in a cover-up; and although the bodies of the boys have
not been found, they are dead. Central to the commission's
findings was the testimony of former SIC agent Hugo Efraín
España Torres, who revealed that the boys were tortured by SIC
officials and that he collaborated in dumping their bodies in
Lake Yambo, near Quito, during the night of January 11-12, 1988.
</p>
<p> España has reportedly been in provisional detention since
September 4, 1991. Also detained in connection with the case
are: Guillermo Llerena, a former SIC agent; General Gilberto
Molina, who retired from his post as general commander of the
National Police on August 16, 1991; and Colonels Trajano
Barrionuevo and Gustavo Gallegos, Captain Marcelo Valenzuela and
Sub-Lieutenant Doris Morán, all of the police. In October 1991,
Dr. Walter Guerrero, president of the Supreme Court, ruled that
the case should be tried in civilian court. Human rights
monitors in Ecuador believe that General Molina is likely to
exercise his right under the Ecuadoran Constitution to be tried
in a police court.
</p>
<p> The Restrepo case is of historic significance in Ecuador. In
addition to determining that SIC officials were responsible for
the death of the two boys, the commission found that torture,
arbitrary detention, and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment
are systematic SIC practices. ("Informe Restrepo: Arrancados
del Hogar," p.5.) On the same day that the commission released
its findings, President Borja abolished the SIC. Never before
has the Ecuadoran government even implicitly acknowledged the
institutionalized nature of human rights abuses committed by
SIC agents or taken such a dramatic measure to curb abuses. Nor
have so many officials or officials of such a high level been
detained in Ecuador in connection with a human rights case. The
case has lent unprecedented recognition and legitimacy to the
cause of human rights in Ecuador. The resulting pressure of
public opinion makes it likely that the case will be prosecuted
vigorously.
</p>
<p> The armed forces also violate fundamental rights in Ecuador,
though less frequently than the police. They have been
implicated in cases of torture, homicide, illegal detention and
physical mistreatment of common criminals and indigenous
activists.
</p>
<p> Rural violence also remains a serious problem in Ecuador.
Rural land conflicts occur in large numbers in the eastern
coastal and central mountain regions, and are the predominant
context within which rural violence occurs. Although Americas
Watch takes no position on who has the right to land ownership
in these disputes, we are profoundly concerned about the
violent consequences of these conflicts, the consistent failure
of the state to punish those responsible for acts of violence,
and the repression directed at the Ecuadoran indigenous
movement.
</p>
<p> In June 1990, the indigenous population in the Sierra
participated in a three-day massive protest over land and other
socioeconomic and cultural issues. A few months later, several
landowners in the Sierra hired groups of armed men from the
coastal province of Esmeraldas, ostensibly to serve as
"security guards" for their rural property. Many of these men
are former members of the armed forces; they dress in military
uniforms and reportedly carry firearms issued only to the armed
forces. (Eduardo Tamayo, "Chronicle of a Reported Death," Punto
de Vista, as reported in Foreign Broadcast Information Service,
May 31, 1991, page 35.)
</p>
<p> Abuses related to land conflicts are frequently committed
during evictions by landowners and their "security guards,"
often in the presence of National Police officials. Beatings of
indigenous community leaders and members are common, as are the
burning of their homes and the destruction and theft of their
property. From time to time, police and military officials play
a direct role in evictions. "Guards" have also entered
indigenous communities adjacent to the property they are
protecting and subjected inhabitants to threats, theft, violence
and destruction.
</p>
<p> Two indigenous activists were killed in 1991. Julio
Cabascango, human rights officer of the Indigenous and Peasant
Federation of Imbabura (FICI), was knifed to death in the
community of Huaycopungo, province of Imbabura, on March 31.
Members of the community allege that the assailant was a hired
guard from the neighboring hacienda. According to the
Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, Virgilio
Ganzino was shot to death on September 21 by landowner
Washington Albán. The killing took place in the community of
Churo Lozán, the province of Cotopaxi, while Ganzino was on his
way to a meeting about a local bilingual education program.
</p>
<p> Minister of Government and Police César Verduga told
Americas Watch in a July 14 interview that the armed guards fill
a gap in a country which has 15,000 police officials but
requires 45,000. Verduga indicated that at no time has the
government contemplated the dismantling of such groups. On the
contrary, he intends to "control their existence" with
government regulations requiring them to function as employees
of a legally constituted securi