The mission will visit the country between Wednesday and Friday.
A mission of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), chaired by Commissioner Stuardo Ralón, rapporteur for the Rights of Persons Deprived of Liberty, will visit Ecuador between Wednesday and Friday to learn about the situation in the country’s prisons before the riots and massacres that accumulate 320 deaths so far in 2021.
This was reported on Monday by the Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry, which announced that its objective will be to visit various prisons and hold meetings with the competent national authorities, civil society organizations and other relevant actors to analyze the situation of people deprived of liberty.
The executive secretary of the IACHR, Tania Reneaum, and the deputy executive secretary for Monitoring, Technical Cooperation and Promotion, María Claudia Pulido, are also members of the delegation.
Ecuador is going through an unprecedented crisis in the country’s prison system, where more than 300 inmates have been murdered in prisons in brawls attributed to criminal gangs linked to drug trafficking.
“As announced by the president, Guillermo Lasso, all the facilities of the case will be granted to the mission given the nature of the problem, the solution of which constitutes the main priority of the national government,” the Foreign Ministry said in its statement.
The mission of the IACHR is of a technical nature, with the task of providing cooperation and assistance to help solve the delicate situation that the prison system is going through.
The Ecuadorian president renewed the state of emergency in prisons for 30 more days due to the “serious internal commotion” generated by the riots and massacres that accumulate 320 deaths so far in 2021.
One of the measures established in the document issued this Monday is the suspension of the right to inviolability of correspondence and freedom of association and assembly of prisoners.
The document also recognizes a “theoretical deficit” of 2,500 prison security agents nationwide.
Lasso signed the first declaration of a state of exception on September 29 after the largest massacre recorded inside an Ecuadorian prison, which resulted in 118 deaths, and lasted for 60 days.
Another state of exception, in this case due to citizen insecurity, is in force until December 18 in nine Ecuadorian provinces. (I)
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