Front Line is deeply concerned following reports that human rights defender, Mr Vicente Zhunio Samaniego, has again been arbitrarily detained since 20 January 2009, after being released from hospital. Vicente Zhunio Samaniego is a community leader and President of the Asociación Campesina de Limón Indanza (Peasants' Association of Limón Indanza), which is a member organisation 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).

Further Information

The NCCDLS is a committee that defends 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. Front Line issued an urgent appeal regarding the arbitrary detention of Vicente Zhunio Samaniego on 7 January 2009, after he was first detained on 5 January 2009.

On 20 January 2009, Vicente Zhunio Samaniego was discharged from Hospital del Seguro, a hospital in Cuenca, and transferred to the Centro de Detención Provisional (Provisional Detention Centre). He had been admitted to hospital after being hit by several pellets in the head, the face and the throat, losing consciousness, and then being beaten in a police patrol car following his arrest in Indanza parish in the canton of Limón Indanza, Morona Santiago, on 5 January 2009.

He was reportedly forced to wait seven hours before receiving medical attention in a hospital in Macas, despite there being a hospital within 20 minutes of where he was arrested. Medical reports confirm that pellets penetrated Vicente Zhunio Samaniego's skull and are now lodged in his brain, and that others remain close to his lung.

The following day a judge sentenced Vicente Zhunio Samaniego to a preventative prison sentence, claiming that the accused was arrested while in the act of committing a crime but he did not indicate what the crime was. Vicente Zhunio Samaniego was not present at the court ruling but reports that he remembers that police wanted to make him sign a blank piece of paper. According to the police reports, Vicente Zhunio Samaniego was arrested when 'supplying food'.

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