RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The national strike, called by the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), continues this Sunday in a context where at least six sectors of the capital, Quito, remain closed due to protests and the Government ratifies its decision to maintain the state of emergency.
Protests continue despite the declaration of a state of emergency in Pichincha, Cotopaxi, and Imbabura. CONAIE’s president, Leonidas Iza, ratified that “the strike continues national, territorial, and indefinite with a clear agenda of ten issues” presented to the Ecuadorian president, Guillermo Lasso.
In the meantime, the National Police, by order of the Attorney General’s Office, raided the national headquarters of the House of Ecuadorian Culture (Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana) in Quito.
According to the Attorney General’s Office, from an alert that supposedly, in the warehouses and basement of the House of Culture, a group of 30 people, nationals and foreigners, would be storing war material, such as explosives and handmade weapons, which would be used in the demonstrations of the next few days, to hold police and military, to enter the Presidency of the Republic.
Conaie says this was an operation carried out “with amazing agility by an anonymous call”, in which, in reality, “the Government raids cultural, democratic spaces, imprisons and attacks social leaders and criminalizes the National Strike”.
This space denounces the president of the Casa de la Cultura, Fernando Cerón, sheltered citizens during the demonstrations of October 2019, in a humanitarian act, in the face of what he called the excessive police repression.
Several artists, cultural managers, and political actors claim that it is part of the criminalization of protest carried out by the National Government, so they reject this raid.
Conaie has also insisted on requesting the National Assembly, which meets this Monday in plenary session, not to become an accomplice of the Government and repeal the decree by which President Guillermo Lasso imposed the State of Emergency, which they described as a “desperate act”.