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Brigitte García was a very brave Human Rights Defender

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                                  Above all else, Brigitte Garcia devoted her time as the Mayor of San Vicente to defend the inalienable human rights of residents to affordable, sufficient, safe water. In a nation where one out of three children are exposed to contaminated water and are malnourished, Brigitte sought concrete solutions to the drought conditions that they suffer. Brigitte challenged the water mafia who are sucking the poor dry. She demanded that illegal connections to the public water supply were found and stopped. She called a state of emergency in the canton for the lack of water provision. She arranged for water to be delivered from the Prefecture of Manabí, and then… She signed contracts with The Development Bank to construct two new water plants, in Canoa and San Vicente – giving those communities independence from the water company that violate their human rights every day (through incompetence, whether deliberate or otherwise.) That was on the 21st of March. And
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Canadian’s terrorists “consult” indigenous communities

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  A consultation, by its very definition, is a discussion seeking the advice of experts. Terrorism, on the other hand, is the unlawful use of violence and intimidation against civilians in the pursuit of political aims. In July 2023, an “environmental consultation” in Cotopaxi left six civilians injured by police and the military using tear gas, pellets and rubber bullets against them. This “consultation” was conducted by the Ecuadorian Ministry of Environment, Water & Ecological Transition so that a subsidiary of the Canadian transnational mining company, Atico, could move into the exploitation stage of their plans. The community “consulted” are Ecuadorian citizens from the Palo Quemado parish, in the Sigchos canton of the province of Cotopaxi. In March 2024 , paramilitary forces of the “Campesino Defense Councils” on behalf of Atico mining, gathered in the parish. They set up check-points demanding documentation from passersby. They travelled in trucks and motorbikes with
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Human Rights defenders are "anti-patriotic" says President Noboa

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  For the safety of Ecuadorian citizens, it is undeniable that the prisons needed dramatic reform. Before January the 17 th 2024, when they became militarized, the prisons and prison authorities were under the control of drug cartels .   Massacres between rival gangs occurred and guns, bullets and drugs were found inside the penitentiaries . Fito, the leader of the largest drug cartel in Ecuador, lived like a king inside the jail, until he was permitted to escape. But for prisoners the change has been like a leap from a frying pan into a fire. Military intervention has violated the Human Rights of prisoners by a regime of discipline that is beyond legal. Prisoners are beaten with sticks and metal cables. They have been denied food for up to six days. They have been asphyxiated by having their heads plunged into water tanks, subjected to torture by electric shock, been thrashed in the testicles by metal cables and   gassed  (as evidenced in this video). Prisoners...when they hav
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Who will purge the "purgers"?

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                      Yesterday, I spoke to Byron (real identity protected) a small businessman who, during the                             “state of exception” was driving between two cities on a routine delivery. He was intercepted     by masked gunmen who stole his vehicle and left him on the side of the road with nothing but the clothes he was wearing. Later, he was given the opportunity to buy back his car for $3000. I, jokingly, asked if the robbers were the police or other criminals. He sighed and solemnly told me it was a mix of the two. For traffic police, the state of exception is simply (illegal) business as usual. Empowered by the assumption that they might be checking vehicles for drugs or guns, they pull drivers over for minor traffic infractions, like balding tires. Threatened with towing the vehicle away the only solution is to offer a bribe, either in cash or a direct bank transfer to a personal account. Kerching! Extortion racketing by uniformed forces. Whi
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Ecuadorians kidnapping and torturing LGBTQI+ at "clinics"

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  Back in 2013, the international press published the shocking torture and rapes that Ecuadorian LBGTQI+ people were being subjected to in, so called, “conversion clinics.”  Pink News wrote: Unregulated gay conversion therapy clinics found in Ecuador have been using both rape and torture as corrective measures against patients, a recent investigation has reported. According to the Sunday Times, gay people and other “socially undesirable” patients are abused in the country’s secret clinics as a means of “spiritual correction.” The government has reported “therapies” ranging from electric shock treatment to submersion in ice-cold water. Lesbian patients are also raped, according to the government, and two people died in clinics last year. “We’re talking about a mafia, a network that operates on a national level, violating human rights in every province,” said Carina Vance Mafla, Ecuador’s openly lesbian health minister. They told the story of Zulmena Constante. More t
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Water Mafia sucking the poor dry in Ecuador

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  Water Mafia is an internationally recognised phenomenon and yet, in Ecuador, it is conspicuously undefined, and therefore, uninvestigated…and consequently unchallenged. At its most malevolent, water mafia is a sinister, clandestine, symbiotic relationship between public water companies, local politicians, local corporations, private investors, powerful politicians and even legislators. It is an organised crime. It is a very simple formula. Water scarcity is deliberately created by cutting off the public water supply to a community, replacing it with privately owned, high profit-making, water tanker delivery by trucks. Consequently, poor, vulnerable communities become totally dependent on the delivery suppliers. There is no price control or quality control. Families have no choice but to pay extortionate prices for water to survive, without knowing where that water is even coming from. In Ecuador, thousands of families, in communities where most people have no job security or
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