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'Very Serious Crime': Biden Urged to Demand Immediate Release of Ecuador's Former VP
Ecuador's raid of the Mexican embassy in Quito "threatens the security of embassies and diplomats throughout the world," said one expert.
Apr 08, 2024
The Biden administration on Sunday faced calls to demand the immediate release of Ecuador's former vice president after Ecuadorian police stormed Mexico's embassy in Quito and forcibly seized the ex-official, a flagrant breach of the 1961 Vienna Convention.
"Ecuador's government has committed a very serious crime, one that threatens the security of embassies and diplomats throughout the world—not least those of the United States, which has threats to its embassies in much of the world," said Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). "The international community cannot allow this to happen."
The move sparked a diplomatic crisis and global outcry, with Latin American leaders slamming the right-wing Ecuadorian government for its "unacceptable infringement" on Mexico's sovereignty and "kidnapping" of Jorge Glas, who served as vice president under Ecuador's leftist former president Rafael Correa. Glas has reportedly been transferred to a maximum-security prison.
Correa supported lawmaker Luisa González in Ecuador's 2023 presidential contest, which she lost to President Daniel Noboa, the son of the richest man in Ecuador.
"The United States is providing crucial diplomatic, military, and material support to Ecuador."
The illegal raid of Mexico's embassy late Friday came hours after the Mexican government granted political asylum to Glas, who has been living in the embassy since December, when he announced he would appeal a judge's decision ordering him back to jail. Glas has been convicted of corruption and imprisoned repeatedly in recent years; the former vice president has said the charges are politically motivated.
CEPR noted Sunday that Ecuadorian Attorney General Diana Salazar "has long engaged in a campaign of lawfare and political persecution against former president Rafael Correa and other figures from the former Correa government."
"The charges against Correa have been shown to have so little credibility, and the evidence is so lacking, that Interpol for years has refused to act on Ecuador's red notice against him," the group said. "Belgium has granted him political asylum, and he can travel freely to almost anywhere in the world without fear of extradition. And last year, a Brazilian Supreme Court judge annulled evidence against Glas after authorities admitted it may have been tampered with."
Weisbrot stressed in his statement that "the United States is providing crucial diplomatic, military, and material support to Ecuador."
"Canada is currently seeking a 'free trade' agreement with Ecuador," Weisbrot added. "All of this should be suspended until Ecuador releases its former vice president, who it has kidnapped from Mexico's embassy."
As the Financial Timesreported Sunday, Ecuador's right-wing president "is enjoying soaring popularity among Ecuadoreans and strong support from Washington after declaring an all-out war on drug trafficking." In February, the Biden administration declared its "unwavering support" for Ecuador's government and announced "$2.4 million in additional vehicles and security equipment to support the work of police."
FT noted that Noboa, the scion of a banana empire, has invoked "emergency powers to put troops on the streets and sent the army to take control of gang-ridden jails, using tactics partly borrowed from El Salvador's strongman leader Nayib Bukele."
While Noboa's "aggressive response initially reduced violence and brought a precarious sense of safety to places like Guayaquil," The New York Timesobserved, the "stability did not last."
"Over the Easter holiday, there were 137 murders in Ecuador, and kidnappings and extortion have worsened," the Times reported.
Thus far, the Biden administration's response to Ecuador's raid on Mexico's embassy has been tepid. In a social media post late Saturday, U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller wrote that the administration "condemns any violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which says that "agents of the receiving state may not enter" embassies "except with the consent of the head of mission."
"We encourage our partners Mexico and Ecuador to resolve their differences in accord with international norms," Miller added.
Ecuadorian police assaulted Roberto Canseco, Mexico's acting ambassador, during Friday's raid.
"This is totally unacceptable," the career diplomat told reporters. "They have hit me, they have pushed me to the ground. I physically tried to prevent them from entering. They searched the Mexican embassy in Quito like criminals."
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Mexico Cuts Diplomatic Ties With Ecuador After 'Intolerable' Quito Embassy Raid
"This is a flagrant violation of international law and the sovereignty of Mexico," said Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Apr 06, 2024
Mexico on Friday night announced the suspension of diplomatic relations with Ecuador after police stormed the Mexican Embassy in Quito and kidnapped former Ecuadorian Vice President Jorge Glas, who was granted asylum after being convicted of what he claims are politically motivated corruption charges.
"Alicia Bárcena, our secretary of foreign affairs, has just informed me that police from Ecuador forcibly entered our embassy and detained the former vice president of that country who was a refugee and processing asylum due to the persecution and harassment he faces," Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said on social media following the raid.
"This is a flagrant violation of international law and the sovereignty of Mexico, which is why I have instructed our chancellor to issue a statement regarding this authoritarian act, proceed legally, and immediately declare the suspension of diplomatic relations with the government of Ecuador," he added.
Bárcena said that "given the flagrant violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and the injuries suffered by Mexican diplomatic personnel in Ecuador, Mexico announces the immediate breaking of diplomatic relations with Ecuador."
Mexican officials said multiple embassy staff members were injured during the raid. They also said that all Mexican diplomatic staff will immediately leave Ecuador, and that Mexico would appeal to the International Court of Justice to hold Ecuador accountable.
Roberto Canseco, head of chancellery and policy affairs at the embassy, told reporters that "what you have just seen is an outrage against international law and the inviolability of the Mexican Embassy in Ecuador."
"It is barbarism," he added. "It is impossible for them to violate the diplomatic premises as they have done."
Ecuador's government said that Glas—who served as vice president under former leftist President Rafael Correa from 2013-17—was a fugitive who has been "sentenced to imprisonment by the Ecuadorian justice system" and had been granted asylum "contrary to the conventional legal framework."
However, Ecuadorian attorney and political commentator Adrián Pérez Salazar toldAl Jazeera that "the fact that there was this grievance does not—at least under international law—justify the forceful breach of an embassy."
"International law is very clear that embassies are not to be touched, and regardless of whatever justifications the Ecuadorian government might have, it is a case where the end does not justify the means," Salazar added.
Numerous Latin American nations including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Honduras, Panama, Uruguay, and Venezuela condemned the Ecuadorian raid.
"The action constitutes a clear violation of the American Convention on Diplomatic Asylum and the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which, in Article 22, provides that the locations of a diplomatic mission are inviolable and can be accessed by agents of the receiving state only with the consent of the head of mission," the Brazilian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. "The measure carried out by the Ecuadorian government constitutes a serious precedent, and must be subject to strong repudiation, whatever the justification for its implementation."
Honduran President Xiomara Castro de Zelaya—who called the raid "an intolerable act for the international community"—said Saturday that she would convene a special emergency session of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States on Monday. Castro currently serves as CELAC's president pro tempore.
The Organization of American States General Secretariat issued a statement Saturday rejecting "any action that violates or puts at risk the inviolability of the premises of diplomatic missions and reiterates the obligation that all states have not to invoke norms of domestic law to justify non-compliance with their international obligations."
"In this context, it expresses solidarity with those who were victims of the inappropriate actions that affected the Mexican Embassy in Ecuador," the body added.
It's been a bad week for the inviolability of sovereign diplomatic spaces. Iran and Syria on Monday accused Israel of bombing the Iranian Consulate in Damascus, an attack that killed 16 people including senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders as well as Iranian and Syrian diplomats and other civilians.
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Ecuador's Progressive Future at Stake in Upcoming Election
The destruction of the rule of law in Ecuador has destroyed much of the foundations of democracy, including in the areas of basic human rights and free elections.
Oct 14, 2023
Imagine a developing country where a 43-year-old economist with a PhD from the University of Illinois, who is relatively unknown as a politician, runs for president and wins. Despite the preceding decades of corruption and institutional rot, he puts together a competent government and gets the economic policy right. The numbers tell much of the story: in the 10 years of his presidency, poverty fell by 41 percent; income per person grew at more than twice the rate of the previous 25 years; and public investment and government expenditure on health services doubled as a share of the economy.
These and other gains (e.g., in education) were accompanied by unprecedented levels of political stability, and Ecuador was one of the safest countries in South America.
Welcome to Ecuador in the twenty-first century. That was part one of the story that began when Rafael Correa took office in 2007. But then he left office in 2017, and things went to hell in a hurry, over the past six years. The first president of this period was Lenín Moreno, who came from Correa’s party but within months turned against it. He purged the party of people who were loyal to its original progressive mission, leaving the country’s largest political movement without a political party. He then purged the judiciary, and used it to persecute his opponents. This included Correa himself — who faces an eight-year prison sentence if he comes home. Correa’s charges and trial were a farce, with the court finding that he used “psychic influence” over others to commit crimes. Because it was so obviously a case of political persecution, he was given political asylum in Belgium, and can travel freely to almost anywhere besides Ecuador without fear of extradition.
Guillermo Lasso, the current president and one of Ecuador’s richest people, was elected in 2021. In May, he dissolved the National Assembly and called for new elections. He was facing impeachment and very likely removal from office, over serious allegations of corruption.
The results of this six-year destruction of the rule of law, and policy reversals, were not pretty. Poverty reached its highest level in a decade, just before the pandemic. The most recent data show a poverty rate 17 percent higher than six years ago. Ecuador’s recovery from the pandemic is at the bottom for South America, in terms of real per capita income today. And the country also had one of the worst per capita death rates in the world from the COVID pandemic.
More frightening right now is the spiraling violence. Under Correa, Ecuador’s homicide rate had declined from 18 per 100,000 to just 5.8 (2016) — one of the lowest in Latin America — but has since exploded to a projected 40 for 2023, one of the highest in the hemisphere. And this includes unprecedented political violence, including the August 9 assassination of a presidential candidate, Fernando Villavicencio, who had challenged organized crime.
This recent history is of particular importance right now. Ecuador has a presidential election in less than a week, and the candidates represent opposing sides of the policy choices, goals, values, and interests that brought about the sharply contrasting results of the two preceding episodes.
On one side, from the same wealth strata as Lasso — net worth in the hundreds of millions at least — is Daniel Noboa. He is the son of the banana tycoon Alvaro Noboa, Ecuador’s richest person. Daniel Noboa was elected to the national Assembly in 2021, and is widely seen as representing the status quo. This includes his connections to both Lasso and to organized crime — for example through Lasso’s agriculture minister, Bernardo Manzano, a former senior manager in the Noboa Group, who resigned as minister in a corruption scandal in February.
On the other side is Luisa Gonzalez, previously a minister in the Correa government and a former representative in the National Assembly. She pledges to reverse the damage of the past six years by stepping up the fight against crime and corruption, as well as by increasing public investment in infrastructure, health, and education. Most of her program is based on a continuation of what she sees as the successful policies of the Correa government, with additional efforts, e.g., in public safety, to fix some of the big things that have since been broken.
The choice would seem self-evident. But, as we who live in the United States have learned — especially since 2016 — a lot can depend on the information that large parts of the electorate consume. Most Ecuadorans have probably not heard the most important facts described here. The latest polls show Sunday’s election as too close to call.
The destruction of the rule of law in Ecuador has destroyed much of the foundations of democracy, including in the areas of basic human rights and free elections. Journalists are afraid to write about the richest and most powerful politicians and presidents’ mafia connections; they face death threats if they do. So, too, can key witnesses in major criminal cases, as witnessed last week: seven men arrested in the assassination of Villavicencio were murdered while in jail. They won’t be telling any stories about who recruited or paid them.
The experience of other countries has shown that the kind of governance that has been developing in Ecuador over the past six years — an amalgamation of oligarchs, organized crime and violence, corruption and lack of accountability — can be extremely difficult to reform when it becomes entrenched. Sunday’s election could have a profound and possibly lasting impact on the country’s future.
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