Bodies found in Ecuador may be children kidnapped by military

The “incinerated” bodies recently found at the Taura air base could be those of the four Ecuadorian boys who passed by the bakery after the football game in the south of Guayaquil, on December 8, never to return, assesses lawyer Angélica Porras, from Popular Legal Action, an entity that defends the constitutional rights of the population, in an exclusive interview.

The forced disappearance of the “Guayaquil Four”, as the brothers Josué (14 years old) and Ismael Arroyo (15), Nehemias Arboleda (15) and Steve Gerald (just 11), from the poor community of Malvinas, are being called. for the country to rise up against the catastrophic situation of insecurity and terror imposed by Daniel Noboa’s government.

With elections scheduled for February 9th, the tycoon is seeking reelection by using censorship of the opposition and abusing political, financial and media agreements with the United States. In “negotiations”, anything goes: from the handover of the strategic Galápagos archipelago, to be converted into a US military base, to the privatization of strategic companies – electricity and oil – or “security” agreements that allow the penetration of US troops and instructors , in a clear attack on national sovereignty.

The result is clearly seen in the murders and disappearances by members of the Armed Forces, in collusion with militias and drug trafficking gangs, who are gaining ground and power.

Son reveals beating

In the case of the Four, after not returning home, one of the children managed to speak to his father, Luis Arroyo. His last words give the dimension of the horror experienced: “The military caught us, beat us, they are accusing us of robbery and arrested us. Please come and save me.”

For lawyer Angélica Porras, “the situation of the families of the four boys who were forced to disappear is becoming more difficult every day”. Despite the pain, he pointed out, “what happened opened the door for other people who also had loved ones disappeared by the military to make their dramas public.” Since then, at least nine other complaints have appeared with first and last names. “All in the same circumstances: impoverished, marginalized people, whom the military took away and were never heard from again.”

Regarding the identification of the recently found bodies, there are points to clarify, said Angélica. The first is that a habeas corpus was achieved, recognizing the “forced disappearance” of people who were victims of violence. “There is this reading by a judicial authority, a constitutional judge. At the same time, there is no indication that the young people were doing anything that violated the law. The boys were taken to a non-detention location, such as the Taura Air Base, a military zone belonging to the Ecuadorian Air Force. Furthermore, from then on, his fate was never heard from again.”

According to the lawyer from Ação Jurídica Popular, “bodies were initially found in a river and said that they did not correspond to young people. Soon after, several bodies were found at Taura Air Base, the same place where the boys were taken.” The parents were called this Wednesday (25) so that they could be identified, but there was no way, as they were completely charred. “The only thing left was to do the DNA tests.”

Families face pressure

It is the human rights organizations in Guayaquil who have effectively taken responsibility for defending justice, “because if they did not exist, if the families did not count on their collaboration, it would have been impossible for the crime to come to light”, explained the lawyer. “The parents of the young people, from three different families, belong to an organized sector of the Malvinas community, which gave them the conditions to denounce and remain strong in the face of pressure from governments and the military,” he added.

According to Angélica, “there is a terrible disinformation campaign, orchestrated from the government, because the Minister of Defense himself said that this operation had been a response to young people who had committed a crime”. “This was proven to be a lie, as nothing appeared, not a single complaint from anyone or even the police against the boys. It is a campaign that aims to contain the discredit caused by the enormous injustice committed and by impunity”, he highlighted.

The lawyer stressed that there is a frame-up “conducted from social media by military and ex-military personnel who enjoyed some prestige when they left, saying that this was an isolated case and that the young people must have been committing some crime”. The fact, he emphasized, is that “they were not and, even if they were doing something wrong, Ecuadorian law and the Convention on Persons Facing Enforced Disappearances establish the mechanisms and rules of punishment, especially for minors”. “They could never have been taken to a military base, they would have had to be at the disposal of the specialized police and the juvenile court. But none of that happened, so it is a forced disappearance”, he asserted.

Media acted to cover up

Based on what she saw and heard, the lawyer maintains that “the mainstream media in Ecuador provided very mediocre coverage”. “If the denunciation had not occurred on networks and all the social mobilization that occurred, both in Guayaquil and Quito, everything would have gone unnoticed”, he pondered.

Angélica clarified that “the disappearance was on December 8th and Josué and Ismael’s family man reported it on the same day”. “But all of this remained hidden for 13 days. This only started to become a problem for the government when a video was found showing soldiers, armed to the teeth, grabbing a boy and throwing him into the back of the truck, where a soldier puts his knee on the child’s chest. There is another boy with shorts and a t-shirt in the middle of all those soldiers with giant weapons, in absolute disproportion”, he condemned.

“As these images come to light and the father of these boys allows us to see fragments of the videos that show two patrols with eight soldiers each arriving to arbitrarily deprive the freedom of the four little ones, a complaint is made on social media. It is only then, after two weeks of disappearance, that this becomes a national problem, leading to a statement from the Armed Forces. Because before, we only managed to get a statement from the Minister of Defense, the Minister of the Interior and the Commander of the Armed Forces, who said they had nothing to do with it, that what happened was the result of militias and things like that”.

Faced with the impact of the images that clearly showed what the military had tried to hide, “the next day the President of the Republic said he would suggest that the boys be transformed into national heroes”. “Obviously this outraged people because it sent the message that the four were already dead. So there was no longer any way for the media to talk, delivering too much news, too late, clearly trying to throw dirt on this and other scandals. I would say that the mainstream media acted to cover it up, acting as a means of disinformation in a super authoritarian context in which we have a dictator in government”, concluded Angélica.