Indigenous leaders in Ecuador captured and publicly paraded eight police officer...
QUITO - Indigenous leaders in Ecuador captured and publicly paraded eight police officers before a crowd on Thursday, pushing back against a tough government crackdown on anti-austerity protests that have shaken President Lenin Moreno’s administration.
The eight officers were forced on stage in front of thousands of people. Looking scared, the officers were asked to take off their helmets, bullet proof vests and boots. Complaining about a lack of local media coverage of police violence, indigenous leaders asked TV journalists onto the stage and demanded that broadcasters show the scene live.“We’re going to radicalize with more force, my friends,” Jaime Vargas, head of indigenous group Conaie, told the cheering crowd. “I’ve just ordered our partners in the Amazon to close all oil wells.”The protesters want Moreno to repeal austerity measures that his government passed in keeping with a $4.2 billion IMF loan.
“We’re not used to this kind of repression,” ombudsman Freddy Carrion told Reuters by phone, worrying about a potential spiral of violence on both sides. Moreno, 66, who succeeded leftist leader Rafael Correa in 2017, has repeatedly refused to restore the fuel subsidies, defending their elimination as part of overdue efforts to rein in the fiscal deficit.
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