2024-01-11 22:59:15
The president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, decreed on Tuesday that the entire country is in internal armed conflict and ordered the military forces to neutralize organized crime gangs linked to drug trafficking, which he described as terrorists. What does this measure imply?
On Tuesday, a criminal group broke into Guayaquil’s TC Televisión channel in full live broadcast. The hooded men intimidated, beat and held down the employees before being detained by the police. While this action was taking place, President Noboa published Decree 111 on social network X with which he seeks to end the wave of crime linked to drug trafficking that has plagued the country in recent years.
LOOK: Lobos, Choneros, Tiguerones: the list of the 22 criminal gangs identified as terrorists in Ecuador
In Decree 111, the Government of Ecuador qualifies 22 criminal organizations as “terrorists and belligerent non-state actors.” The list includes Águilas, ÁguilasKiller, AK47, Caballeros Oscuros, ChoneKiller, Choneros, Covicheros, Cuartel de las Feas, Cubanos, Fatales, Gánster, Kater Piler, Lagartos, Latin Kings, Lobos, Los p.27, Los Tiburones, Mafia 18 , Mafia Trébol, Patrones, R7 and Tiguerones.
The president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, during a meeting with diplomats at the Carondelet Palace, on January 10, 2024. (EFE/Presidency of Ecuador).
“I have ordered the Armed Forces to carry out military operations to neutralize these groups,” Noboa wrote. He added that these actions will be carried out “under international humanitarian law and respecting human rights.”
Before the takeover of TC Televisión, on Sunday the authorities confirmed that Adolfo Macías, alias Fito and leader of Los Choneros, the most dangerous criminal in the country, escaped from the Guayaquil prison where he was being held to serve a 34-year sentence. of jail.
In parallel, numerous inmates rioted in several prisons in the country and took more than 100 prison officers hostage. Those deprived of liberty demand that the military forces not enter prisons.
So, Noboa’s first reaction was to declare a state of emergency throughout the country and order a curfew between 11 at night and 5 in the morning.
At this point, it should be noted that in 2023 Ecuador closed with more than 7,800 homicides and 220 tons of drugs seized, both figures are records.
Homicides in Ecuador as of June 2023. (AFP).
That is the context in which Daniel Noboa, who assumed power in Ecuador on November 23, 2023, issued the decree on Tuesday declaring the internal armed conflict.
The measure orders “to arrange the mobilization and intervention of the Armed Forces and National Police in the national territory to guarantee sovereignty and territorial integrity once morest transnational organized crime, terrorist organizations and belligerent non-state actors in accordance with the provisions of this Executive Decree.” .
Security forces patrol the Carondelet Palace in Quito on January 10, 2024. (Photo by Rodrigo BUENDÍA / AFP).
What is an internal armed conflict?
According to International Humanitarian Law (IHL), a non-international (or “internal”) armed conflict is a situation of violence that occurs in a State, where prolonged armed confrontations occur between government forces and one or more organized armed groups, or between irregular groups.
According to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), International Humanitarian Law requires the presence of two conditions to determine the existence of an internal armed conflict: armed groups must have a minimum level of organization and armed confrontations must have a minimum level of organization. They must reach a minimum level of intensity.
The ICRC adds that the existence of an internal armed conflict gives rise to the application of IHL, also known as the law of armed conflict, which imposes limitations on the way in which the parties can carry out hostilities and protects all affected persons. for the conflict. IHL imposes equal obligations on both parties to the conflict, although it does not confer any legal status on armed opposition groups participating in hostilities.
Is there any precedent in Ecuador? According to the Primicias portal, the last time Ecuador declared an internal armed conflict was in 1995, during the Cenepa war that confronted Peru. That time the measure did not reach the entire country.
Ecuadorian security forces patrol the El Labrador metro station in Quito on January 10, 2024. (Photo by STRINGER/AFP).
What is going to happen in Ecuador?
The constitutionalist Rafael Oyarte explained to the EFE agency the differences between issuing a state of exception and declaring an internal armed conflict.
In the first case, it is issued for criminal reasons or serious internal commotion. The Armed Forces intervene as an auxiliary force of the National Police.
While in the second case, the operations will no longer be police, but exclusively of a military nature, where the police only operate as an auxiliary force.
The lawyer said that in an internal armed conflict the purpose of the military forces is not to locate and capture the opposing elements but to “neutralize them,” with “elimination as an extreme factor, but basically surrendering the enemy.”
He clarified that “massacres or rivers of blood” have not been authorized. He insisted that neutralizing means using “lethal force to surrender the enemy.”
While the constitutionalist Ismael Quintana told EFE that “recognizing these gangs no longer as criminal groups, but as belligerent groups generates an undeniable legal effect: The Armed Forces have full constitutional authorization to neutralize them with the collaboration of the Police.”
For his part, Professor Efrén Guerrero, a human rights specialist, told Primicias that the Constitutional Court will review the decree and must establish the rules that will have to be taken into account for decision-making. At that moment its real scope and effects will only be known.
Presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio speaks during a campaign rally, minutes before he was assassinated, on August 10, 2023, in Quito, Ecuador. (Photo from EFE)
Are there the conditions to declare internal armed conflict in Ecuador?
Last year, presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was assassinated in Quito in the middle of the election campaign. He had reported being the victim of death threats from the leader of Los Choneros, alias Fito. But following the crime, a video circulated in which Los Lobos, the strongest criminal organization in the country, claimed responsibility. So far the case has not been resolved.
This week, the criminal groups that have rioted in the prisons have warned President Noboa in videos that if the military enters the prisons, a war will be provoked in the country.
Are these and other elements, such as having 22 criminal organizations designated as terrorists, several of which control territory and manage ports to export drugs in complicity with foreign mafias, are they sufficient to determine that there is an internal armed conflict in the country?
Edward Pérez, a human rights expert at the Faculty of Law at University College London, told BBC Mundo that “in Ecuador it is not clear if the conflict reaches the level of intensity nor if it is long enough for it to be said that there is actually an internal armed conflict.”
But Ecuadorian lawyer María José Mogrovejo, specialist in Constitutional Law, told BBC Mundo that the conditions to declare internal armed conflict in Ecuador do exist.
“We have the issues of prolongation and intensity because the situation we are currently experiencing has not just emerged with the current government and we have not seen just one riot in the country’s prisons, we have been in this for years… The situation current is uncontrollable. The government lost control of Ecuadorian territory and that is why it needs the intervention of the Armed Forces,” he said.
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