Ecuador: Freedom demanded for Gabriela Gallardo

A call and statement reached us from Socorro Rojo Nuestra América (“Red Aid of Our America“)

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“One year after her arbitrary detention: we demand justice and freedom for Gabriela Gallardo

October 19 marked one year since Ecuadorian justice officials decided not to listen. They decided to look the other way in the face of arbitrariness, persecution, and torture. They decided that the “cemetery of the living,” as those deprived of their liberty call the Cotopaxi prison, “has sufficient conditions.”

A year ago, the judiciary became complicit in the imprisonment of a woman who is a fighter, a mother, a worker, and a popular activist.

Gabriela Gallardo, a militant of the Guevarista Tierra y Libertad Movement (MGTL), has been deprived of her liberty since then. The Ecuadorian state keeps her imprisoned in inhumane conditions, without evidence, without due process, and under unfounded accusations of “terrorism,” which are part of a new offensive to criminalize those who fight for a more just and supportive Ecuador.

Today, as the Ecuadorian people take to the streets once again in a national strike against hunger, precariousness, and repression, the government is attempting to instill fear and division by labeling grassroots organizations and all forms of protest as “terrorists.” The label of terrorism has become a tool of power to legitimize political persecution, silence the voices of the territories, repress indigenous communities, and justify state violence. What they are punishing is not a crime: it is the conscience, organization, and hope of the people.

“They took her away from us, they snatched her away,” denounce her relatives, comrades, and activists. “They left a child without his mother, a mother without her daughter.” Gabriela was torn from her home and confined to a prison where there is no electricity, no water, and no medicine.

Sometimes, not even a plate of food. In that place of darkness, the state wants to break her, but it fails: because her name lives on, shouted, elevated, imprinted on every act of solidarity.

Gabriela is an example of dignity. Her intelligence, her strength, and her social commitment inspire those of us who knew her and those of us who today raise her name in every territory. She represents so many women whom those in power try to silence, but who continue to organize, resist, and love through struggle.

From Socorro Rojo Nuestra América, we reaffirm that the criminalization of popular activism will not stop the organization or the hope of the peoples who struggle.

We denounce the arbitrary detention and cruel and inhumane treatment to which Gabriela Gallardo and all the political prisoners of the strike, who have been resisting for more than a month in the streets and territories of Ecuador, are being subjected.

Let us shout for Gaby, for Omar, for Carlos and the 12 indigenous people of Otavalo, for every comrade who suffers persecution!

Freedom and justice for Gabriela Gallardo!

End repression and torture in Ecuador’s prisons!”

#socorrorojo

Nuestra América