'SO THAT NO ONE CAN DEMAND ANYTHING' - Office of the High ...

10‘So that no one can demand anything’Criminalizing the right to protest in Ecuador?first Mining Law was introduced in 1991 and enabling regulations to implement the law wereissued six years later. Reforms, such as the introduction of lower taxes, were incorporated in2000, making Ecuador more attractive to foreign extractive companies 9 and by April 2007,mining concessions extended over an area of 2.8 million hectares, around half of which(45.6 per cent) involved mining for metals. 10THE 2005-2006 PROTESTSAs in many countries in Latin America, this spike in mining projects and the lack ofconsultation with potentially affected communities led to an increase in public protests.Some have been peaceful, while others have not. In the last few years, this social unrest hasprompted Ecuador to declare numerous states of emergency. For instance, in May and August2005, it declared a state of emergency in response to protests in the Sucumbios andOrellana provinces. Communities there had organized to demand that their rights vis-à-visextractive activities be respected and that a greater part of the oil revenues be investedlocally. Dozens of people were reportedly detained. 11In March 2006, a state of emergency was declared in the provinces of Sucumbios, Orellanaand Napo and a presidential decree designated them national security zones. Moreover,Decree 1214 12 invoked the National Security Law, allowing civilians to be tried by militarycourts 13 . Civilians should never be tried in military courts, which do not provide safeguardsprescribed by international law, including fair and public trials by independent and impartialtribunals. As the UN Human Rights Committee has noted, ‘the trial of civilians in military orspecial courts may raise serious problems as far as the equitable, impartial and independentadministration of justice is concerned”. 14The experience of Wilman Jiménez Salazar, a member of the Orellana Human RightsCommittee, is a case in point. He took part in a protest on 19 June 2006 by campesinosagainst the alleged environmental impact of an oil company operating in Payamino, Orellanaprovince. 15 One of the demands made by the community was that the company bury a pipecarrying crude oil because they claimed that people had been burned. In response to thisdemonstration, the National Police and the military reportedly used tear gas and rubberbullets to disperse the crowd.Wilman Jiménez Salazar was shot six times with rubber bullets as he took photographs of theprotest, and then detained. He was held by the military in Orellana who accused him ofterrorism and sabotage under the National Security Law and refused to allow him to attend ahabeas corpus hearing. He was eventually released on 6 July after spending 17 days inmilitary detention. However, he remained under investigation by the military authorities untilSeptember 2006, when his case was transferred to civilian jurisdiction. Wilman JiménezSalazar was cleared of all charges on 23 April 2008 under the amnesties granted by theConstituent Assembly in March 2008 (see “The 2008 amnesties” below). 16THE “CITIZEN’S REVOLUTION”In January 2007, Rafael Correa became Ecuador’s seventh President in 10 years; threeelected presidents had been forced out of office following mass protests. Rafael Correa’selection was seen as a new chapter in Ecuador’s political history. He pledged to implement a“citizen’s revolution” by improving health and education, reducing corruption, protecting theenvironment and reforming the Constitution.Amnesty International – July 2012 Index: AMR 28/002/2012