2023-10-26 01:27:00
A councilor from a coastal city in the Ecuadorian province of Guayas, mired in an unstoppable wave of insecurity, was murdered, the Interior Minister reported on Wednesday. The crime was added to the long list of authorities and politicians murdered within the wave of violence that Ecuador has been experiencing for about three years, attributed mainly to drug trafficking mafias and organized crime.
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Minister Juan Zapata told the AP news agency that the homicide occurred on Tuesday night “outside his house when a motorcycle with two occupants passed by and unfortunately, gunshots were fired, hitman type.” He added that the motives and alleged perpetrators are being investigated.
Charbel Rouhana arrived this year to the council of the coastal city of Yaguachi, about 253 kilometers southwest of the capital, representing the Citizen Revolution political movement led by former president Rafael Correa (2007-2017).
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The State Prosecutor’s Office indicated on Wednesday on the social network
Meanwhile, the government of Guayas, whose capital is Guayaquil and is one of the most violent cities in the country, regretted the death of the official and condemned “the acts that threaten the peace and integrity of our Ecuadorian brothers” in a message on its official account in X.
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The former president of the Rohuana political group and current governor of Guayas, Marcela Aguiñaga, wrote in X that “we all lose when violence is imposed, we all lose when impunity is rampant.”
Archive photograph in which the Minister of the Interior of Ecuador, Juan Zapata, was recorded (EFE/José Jácome)
The Yaguachi mayor’s office also regretted the death of the official. In a statement published two days ago, the municipality had condemned the deaths of at least seven people over the weekend amid the violence facing that town. The municipality warned that “despite multiple requests for an increase in police and military, the national government has not fulfilled its promise to offer more security for Yaguachi.”
The murder of Rohuana is added to that of Bolívar Vera, councilor of Durán, another of the most violent cities in Ecuador, who was kidnapped and found dead at the beginning of September. A former mayor of Durán was also kidnapped but rescued alive at the beginning of October.
Other crimes by local authorities have shocked the country, such as that of the mayor of Manta, Agustín Intriago in July, as well as other municipal officials and prosecutors. In August, presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was assassinated in Quito.
For three years, Ecuador entered a spiral of violence caused by criminal organizations. Initially they committed massacres in prisons, but the violence has quickly spread to the streets where murders by hitmen, extortion, kidnappings and robberies are common.
Ecuador is going through the worst wave of insecurity in its history, which places it among the most violent countries in the region with a homicide rate of 25 per 100,000 inhabitants, that is, 4,600 deaths in 2022, when it broke its record. This year it has registered 3,568 deaths in the first half alone.
(With information from AP and EFE)
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