Front Line is extremely concerned following reports that human rights defender and community leader, Vicente Zhunio Samaniego, from Ecuador, has been located, after 16 hours of incommunicado detention, in a hospital with gunshot wounds to the head.

Vicente Zhunio Samaniego is a community leader and President of the Asociación Campesina de Limón Indanza (Peasants' Association of Limَon Indanza), which is a member of the Coordinadora Nacional por la Defensa de la Vida y la Soberanía (National Co-ordinating Committee for the Defence of Life and Sovereignty – NCCDLS). The NCCDLS is a committee of organisations and members defending environmental rights which are being threatened as a result of the government's plans to develop large-scale mining in rural areas. The NCCDLS was set up with the aim of bringing together peasant and indigenous communities to facilitate collective action to defend the environment.

On 5 January 2009, at approximately 6.30 in the evening, Vicente Zhunio Samaniego was arrested outside the health centre on the main street of the Indanza parish, in the canton of Limَn Indanza, in Morona Santiago province, as he walked down the street. The arresting police officers were reportedly acting on the orders of the political chief of the canton, Humberto Vera. Vicente Zhunio Samaniego was taken away to an unknown location in a national police patrol car. It has been reported that the arrest was carried out without an arrest warrant and that Vicente Zhunio Samaniego was not involved in any activity at the time of his arrest, but was just walking down the street.

On 6 November 2008 the NCCDLS submitted a complaint to the Human Rights Ombudsman in Ecuador in which they highlighted the pattern of persecution against particular members of the Committee. Vicente Zhunio Samaniego was one of the named community leaders in this complaint.

Human rights defenders in Ecuador believe that the arbitrary detention of Vicente Zhunio Samaniego is a direct result of his work as a community leader and member of the NCCDLS, and specifically his work in highlighting the social and environmental impacts of large-scale mining in Ecuador. Front Line is concerned for the physical and psychological integrity of Vicente Zhunio Samaniego.