GUAYAQUIL — Javier Vega was 19 years old and dreamed of becoming a soldier. When he graduated from high school in early 2023, his parents wanted to support him but couldn’t — in Ecuador, you need to pay to study for a military career; they have three other children and couldn’t cover the costs. Vega started looking for alternatives.
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Finally, he made a plan: to study international trade and save enough money to one day join the Armed Forces.
But that dream will never come true.
On Feb. 2, 2024, Vega was murdered by the military in the country’s largest city, Guayaquil. The very institution he had longed to join ended his life.
Almost a month earlier, on Jan. 9, Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa declared, by means of an executive decree, a state of “internal armed conflict” in response to the crisis of drug trafficking, violence and organized crime.
The situation reached its peak that day when a group of armed men seized a live television channel. As a result, the president classified 21 criminal organizations as terrorists, declared a state of emergency for 60 days and ordered the militarization of the streets and the country’s 36 prisons.
A controversial decree
The decision, although applauded by a large part of the population, immediately caused alarm among society organizations and human rights defenders. It allowed the military to carry out patrols on national territory, something that used to be the responsibility of the police. The decision also authorized the military to detain people and vehicles, carry out operations in the streets and public spaces and even in private spaces, since the guarantee of inviolability of the home was suspended.
Now, more than two months after Noboa’s declaration — which was renewed for another 30 days — what is happening on the streets and inside the country’s prisons justifies those worries.
“It’s undoubtedly an extrajudicial execution,” Fernando Bastias, of the Permanent Committee for the Defense of Human Rights (CDH), said about Vega’s murder. The organization, which has been working in Guayaquil for more than four decades, is registering, denouncing and monitoring cases at a national level.
And although Vega’s death has been well publicized, it is not the only one. The CDH has so far counted three executions. The second was that of Jonath Laaz, in Durán, a town near Guayaquil; and the other, that of David Chávez, in Esmeraldas, another coastal town on the border with Colombia. There are also reports of abuse, torture and deaths inside the prisons.
An unjustified shooting
On the day he was killed, Vega left his home, in a neighborhood in southern Guayaquil, with his cousin Eduardo Velasco. The two were going to sell a pit bull puppy — a deal that had already been sealed — and when they arrived at their destination, they found a group of soldiers.
Velasco, at the wheel of the red Chevrolet Aveo, slowed down when he saw the soldiers. Asked where they were going, Velasco said they were heading close by. The cousins were stopped and told that a search operation was underway.
Velasco backed up, trying to get out through a narrow street full of parked cars, but miscalculated the maneuver and scratched a military vehicle that was in the street. In response, one of the soldiers started kicking the car.
“In order not to damage the steering of my car, I moved forward slowly, and then I heard shots. My cousin nudged me and said ‘bro’, and I realized he was wounded,” Velasco recalled. “When I saw him like that, I started the car at full speed to take him to hospital immediately.”
“The soldier threw me to the ground and said ‘You’re going to bleed there, I’m going to let you bleed.'”
He reached the main street in the neighborhood and felt his arm go numb. It was then that he realized that he too had been shot. He stopped the car, called his wife and told her that they had both been shot.
“At that moment, the truck with the soldiers who had shot me arrived. One of them threw me to the ground, stepped on my wound and said: ‘You’re going to bleed there, I’m going to let you bleed.’ Then the other soldier approached and said to his companion: ‘Step on it so it bursts’,” he said.
Velasco said a police officer asked for his cell phone — they were near a community police unit. He handed over the device and unlocked it with his password.
“The policeman asked the soldiers: ‘What happened, why did you shoot them? But they kept quiet. The policeman opened my WhatsApp and said: ‘He’s a cab driver, there are lots of cab groups.’ The military didn’t answer and left the scene, then the ambulance arrived,” Velasco recalls.
In the hospital, Velasco survived, but Vega did not.
Forever changed
Since Feb. 2, the lives of Vega’s parents, Laura Ipanaqué and Carlos Vega, have changed forever. A housewife and a baker, respectively, they dedicate their days to seeking justice for their second son’s death.
When militarization began, they were happy and hoped that insecurity in the country would finally begin to decrease. “I even told my wife that I hoped the military would come by, and I could help them by offering them something to eat,” Carlos Vega said.
They couldn’t have imagined having to bury their son days later — an active boy full of dreams, who played bass in the church choir and was a lover of music and manual arts. After his death, friends created an Instagram account to demand justice on his behalf.
On Feb. 19, Vega’s parents filed a complaint with the Public Prosecutor’s Office against the two officers who killed their son and injured their nephew. But the lawyer who was following the case withdrew, “for safety reasons.” Then, the CDH – which was already providing psychological assistance – took over the legal defense.
Seeking justice
No drugs or weapons were found in the car Velasco and Vega were travelling in. The young man had no criminal record, according to Ecuador’s virtual justice system. Yet there is now a charge of “attack or resistance,” registered on Feb. 3, the day after his murder.
After the incident, the Armed Forces released a statement with the title “terrorists detained in attempted attack on military post.” The document says that the cousins tried to avoid an inspection and hit military personnel and states; “in response to this attack, shots were fired to ensure the safety of personnel.”
Vega’s parents do not know what will happen with the complaint. In addition to the question of the case’s outcome is the question of whether they should be afraid. Some people warned them against interfering with power. All they want is to clear their son’s name.
“If they wanted to neutralize them, why didn’t they shoot the car’s tires? It’s not fair,” Vega’s father said, crying and holding his wife’s hand.
Legitimate abuse?
Silvana Tapia, a lawyer and researcher, believes that this type of abuse occurs under an umbrella of legitimacy “because they are supposed to be protecting us, defending us. It is the state that has exclusive control of legal violence. And it is assumed that what they are doing, they are doing in accordance with the law.”
As of March 10, some 12,000 people had been detained in Ecuador since state of emergency declaration. Only 280 of those were detained on terrorism charges, and 494 were processed. This means that more than 11,500 people were released after detention. Experts said this could be proof of the lack of sufficient elements to initiate legal proceedings.
For the CDH’s Bastias, these numbers respond to a media strategy that “has a very strong effect on certain sectors of the population, who applaud these measures and feel a false sense of peace.”
Noboa’s approval rating confirms this; he has highest approval rating (81.4%) of an Ecuadorian president since 1979, the year in which democracy returned to the country.
Beaten to death
Jonath Laaz, 36, was also killed by the military during the state of emergency; he was beaten to death.
Laaz’s mother, Gladys Banchón said that on Jan. 14, at around 11:30 am, a group of around 30 soldiers knocked the door of his house, in a popular neighborhood in Durán. Laaz was alone and didn’t open it.
“He was probably scared; that was his mistake,” Banchón said. The soldiers then forced down his door, entered and searched his house, and beat Laaz.
“It’s true that my son was a [drug] user, but that’s not a crime, and there was nothing here,” Banchón said. Although they found no drugs or weapons, the soldiers handcuffed Laaz and threw him into the cargo bed — along with other detainees — of a pickup truck with no license plate, as seen in a video recorded by a neighbor.
“My son was not a terrorist. His only crime was living in a poor neighborhood.”
Neither Banchón nor any other member of his family were officially informed of Laaz’s detention. The next day, when the other men in the truck were released, Banchón thought that perhaps her son had also been released. But he did not come home.
Some neighbors organized a search party. And Banchón went to the Judiciary Police and the largest police headquarters in Guayaquil looking for answers, but found no information anywhere.
Three days later, Banchón received a call: her son was at the Guayaquil morgue, and she needed to identify the body.
“My son was very loved here, he worked as an electrician and helped me with the household costs,” said Banchón, a domestic worker. “I hope they recognize that they made a mistake, that they exaggerated with my son. He was not a terrorist. His only crime was living in a poor neighborhood.”
Unprecedented impunity
Like Vega’s parents, Banchón initially viewed military intervention favorably; she hoped the Armed Forces’ presence in the streets would help reduce violent deaths. She never imagined those same soldiers would kill her son without any justification and in such a cruel way.
The autopsy revealed that Laaz suffered hypovolemic shock, acute internal bleeding, splenic laceration, rib fracture and multiple traumas; the blows he received caused his death.
“This will end at the International Court of Human Rights.”
Banchón filed a formal complaint for extrajudicial execution with the Public Prosecutor’s Office, sponsored by the lawyer Pedro Granja.
Granja said this crime is outlined in article 85 of the Comprehensive Organic Penal Code (COIP) — “A public servant, an agent of the State who, deliberately, in the exercise of his functions or through the action of third parties acting at his instigation and supported by the power of the State to justify his acts, deprives another person of life, will be punished with imprisonment of 22 to 26 years.”
Yet Granja said that “to date the Public Ministry has not commented or even called us to recognize the signature. I have never seen so much impunity. This will end at the International Court of Human Rights.”
Shot in the back
David Chávez, a Black 17 year old, was shot in the back by a soldier on Jan. 30, according to a video recorded by a resident of the San Jorge sector in Esmeraldas, coastal city in northwestern Ecuador.
According to the police report, Chávez’s body “showed injuries with characteristics similar to those of a firearm projectile passing through the chest area,” and he was taken by the police to the nearest hospital on orders from the ECU-911 emergency service.
But a communication source from the National Directorate of Investigation of Crimes against Life, Violent Deaths, Disappearances, Kidnappings and Extortions (Dinased) of the Esmeraldas Police indicated via WhatsApp that “the circumstances are unknown in the report we have.” The report indicates that Chávez had no criminal record or legal proceedings.
His mother, Juana*, said that she was at work on that day and received a call around 1 p.m.: “They told me that my son had been detained and shot.” She went to the hospital but couldn’t find him. After a harrowing 10-minute wait, she saw a car arrive with military personnel, who entered the hospital.
“I ran to follow them because I was hoping that they had my injured son. The first thing they said, standing with their weapons, was: ‘Turn off your cell phones.’ Then someone got out of the car.” The worst was confirmed: her son was dead.
“I’m a poor woman. I think there will be no justice.”
Despite her willingness to talk about what happened and her pain over her son’s death, Juana – who has five other children – said over the phone that she will not seek justice: “I’m a poor woman; I have to work to feed my children. I think there will be no justice. I’m afraid, and I think I could be harmed.”
Two boys who were with Chávez were also detained. Their mothers never received official notification of their arrests or of any proceedings against them. And they do not know their sons’ whereabouts.
“They are missing. I’m a mother, this hurts me a lot, but I wouldn’t want to imagine how it would be if I were in their shoes. Hope has been lost.”
Juana was told that her son was shot because he had tried to escape — even though that is not what the video shows. Like Vega’s parents, she wonders why the military shot to kill rather than to neutralize, targeting another part of his body, such as his leg.
No better behind bars
Complaints of human rights abuses also come from behind bars. Since the militarization, the CDH and other organizations have publicly denounced acts of torture in penitentiary centers.
On the morning of Jan. 21, dozens of relatives of prisoners protested desperately outside the Litoral Penitentiary — Ecuador’s largest prison, on the outskirts of Guayaquil — to obtain information about their loved ones after receiving videos of the beatings that were taking place inside the premises. Members of the military themselves had shared these videos, on TikTok and other social networks, to try to gain support from the population.
“The day before, four ambulances left after hitting them. There is no excuse for this to happen, even if they made mistakes,” said María, one of the protesters, whose husband has been in prison for four years. “They were mistreated and humiliated. My husband is injured and not eating.”
Bastias, of CDH, said that in prisons there is a “similar intention to reproduce a discourse of violence. It is said that they are to blame and things like torture become justified, supposedly to save us.” Yet he noted that “This is prohibited not only by international human rights law, but also by international humanitarian law.”
Inmates testified that they have been subjected to inhumane acts since the Armed Forces took over.
On Jan. 29, the CDH presented a petition for corrective habeas corpus due to the health situation of 18 Litoral Penitentiary inmates as a result of torture. As a result of this petition, the court heard, on Feb. 1 and 6, detailed testimony from inmates.
They testified that since the Armed Forces occupied the prisons, inmates have been subjected to degrading insults, blows with sticks, metal cables, restriction of food for more than six days, blows to the testicles, submersion of their head s in water tanks, electric shocks to the body, destruction of medicines for the sick and urine baths, among other inhumane acts.
On Feb. 6, the judge in the case granted precautionary measures in favor of all people at the Litoral Penitentiary and ordered the Armed Forces to respect the law.
In addition to this case, in different prisons across the country, there have been reports of at least eight deaths and of sexual abuse by officers.
The CDH also filed a complaint with the Public Ministry over the rape of four prisoners at the Litoral Penitentiary. Three men testified that they were victims of anal penetration with rifles and sticks; and a trans woman stated that she was gang raped.
Protecting the majority?
“In this conflict, we notified the competent authorities, informing them about the treatments or possible violations of human rights,” Ecuador’s Minister of Women and Human Rights, Arianna Tanca, said in an interview with a local media outlet.
Agência Pública requested an interview with Tanca to discuss these violations and her office accepted the request; however, the interview never took place. The National Service for Attention to Persons Deprived of Liberty (SNAI) and the Armed Forces have not officially commented on the matter.
“Are they going to keep killing innocent people?”
Yet Noboa, himself, wearing an Armed Forces cap, said at a Feb. 15 press conference: “Let no anti-patriot come and tell us that we are violating anyone’s rights, when we are protecting the rights of the vast majority.”
Laura Ipanaqué, Vega’s mother, said she does not agree with these words. She wondered what will happen to people like her, like her son: “We are good people, trying to live our lives. Are our rights worthless? Are they going to keep killing innocent people?”
*The name was changed to protect the source’s identity.
