Disappearance of 4 Afro-Ecuadorian children after detention by military has sparked mass indignation
The case has revived an existing social trauma about the disappearance of children, especially poor and Black ones, at the hands of the State. There is a general feeling of pain and uncertainty among the population.
Four children in Guayaquil, Ecuador were disappeared after they were arrested by state forces on December 8. The news of their parents desperately searching for their underage children has dominated the news in Ecuador for the last several weeks even amid the festive season. On December 8, Ismael and Josué Arroyo (15 and 14 years old), Saúl Arboleda (15 years old), and Steven Medina (11 years old) were detained by a military contingent patrolling the area where the boys were playing football. The four young Afro-Ecuadorian boys have not been seen since then.
What is known about the disappearance of the children?
According to the relatives of the victims, the children went to play a football game in the neighborhood of Las Malvinas, south of Guayaquil. At some point after the game, soldiers came and arrested the four of them. A now widely circulated video,clearly shows how the military captured and beat the child detainees, and then took them away in a white van. While Ecuador also has a police force to carry out arrests and general internal public safety tasks, in the last Popular Consultation carried out in the country, people voted to grant the army special powers to carry out internal security controls. The military’s powers have vastly increased since President Daniel Noboa declared a state of emergency in the country in January 2024.
One of the children’s parents, Luis Arroyo, reported that shortly after their detention, he received a call from his son asking for help and to be rescued. That call was the last time he heard his son’s voice. A key witness, who reportedly lent his cell phone to the boy to call his father, reported that the child had been beaten by the military and was naked.
After several days without answers, it was reported that four charred corpses were found in Taura, near a military base. The parents have already been summoned to the city morgue to confirm if they are their children. However, the state of decomposition and calcination of the bodies is so advanced that it is not possible to know with the naked eye if the remains correspond to the four missing children. Currently, forensic analyses are being carried out to determine the correspondence between the missing children and the remains that were found. Several experts have stated that, if such correspondence is confirmed, the crime could be defined as an “extrajudicial execution”.
Article continues at https://peoplesdispatch.org/2024/12/27/disappearance-of-4-afro-ecuadorian-children-after-detention-by-military-has-sparked-mass-indignation
