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Ecuador. Groups of university students joined this Tuesday the indefinite protest against the government’s economic policy called by the indigenous movement, a mobilization that has risen in tone after the arrest of its leader Leonidas Isa.
Clashes between demonstrators and agents in various races in the country, especially in the Andean city of Latacunga, as well as the attack by students against a police patrol in a sector of central-north Quito, marked this second day that began with the arrest of Iza at dawn.
LOOK: Protests in Ecuador: with bonfires and indigenous barricades they demand economic aid
Members of the Federation of University Students of Ecuador and other social groups held a march this afternoon in Quito, where they added the immediate release of Iza to the list of ten petitions from the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities.
Among the demands are included the freezing of the price of gasoline, the control of the prices of mass consumption products and the opposition to a privatization plan, all of them linked, according to the protesters, to the impositions of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). ).
During the march, near a building where the Prosecutor’s Flagrant Unit operates, several young people, with their faces covered, beat a patrol that was in the place with sticks and stones, painting it in colors and at the end a fire inside the vehicle, which was put out by police officers who dispersed the demonstrators.
Several students were detained at the demonstration by plainclothes officers who were walking confused among the protesters, at a time when several police motorcycles approached to disperse the concentration.
Likewise, videos were broadcast on social networks with the arrival in Quito of trucks with indigenous protesters, who were stationed in the south of the city.
One of the focuses of the protest was concentrated in the city of Latacunga, about 90 kilometers south of Quito, where proceedings were to be carried out for the arrest of Iza, the president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (Conaie), the most important social organization in the country.
In that city, thousands of peasants gathered to demand Iza’s immediate release, considering that her detention was arbitrary and illegal, and because rules of due process had allegedly been violated.
The government of the conservative president, Guillermo Lasso, has justified the arrest of several leaders by considering that they are intellectual authors of violent acts such as the burning of patrols and the alleged paralysis of oil extraction wells in the Amazon.
Lasso, however, has expressed his willingness to dialogue with opponents, although he has said that he will not tolerate public services in the country being altered, at a time when Ecuador is trying to reactivate its economy aggravated by the covid-19 pandemic. .
Source: Elcomercio
I, Ronald Payne, am a journalist and author who dedicated his life to telling the stories that need to be said. I have over 7 years of experience as a reporter and editor, covering everything from politics to business to crime.
