Ecuador's Environment Ministry announced yesterday its intention to shutter Acción Ecológica, the country's leading grassroots environmental organization. The move is a clear reprisal to the group's efforts to raise awareness about environmental and indigenous rights concerns over a planned mega-copper mine on the lands of the Shuar indigenous people in the southern Ecuadorian Amazon. Then yesterday evening the national police raided the offices of the Shuar federation, FICSH, detaining its president, Agustín Wachapa.
"We reject the assertion of the Ministry of the Environment that we have violated national law," said Acción Ecológica in a statement released after the announcement. "We have been scrupulous in our compliance with the law, and our actions are in full harmony with [the government's] National Plan for Good Living 2013-2017," which calls for participatory management of the country's environmental treasures like the Amazon.
Nonetheless, a government memo advocating for the closure – obtained by Acción Ecológica – cites the group's awareness-raising efforts about "the serious environmental impacts and the ecosystem that would result from the extractive activity" in the Cordillera del Condor – the location of the Chinese mining operation – "and to the violation of the rights of indigenous... Read More
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