BY JAIME DAREMBLUM

About two years ago, a senior Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) official said that a certain Latin American country was becoming a veritable “United Nations” of organized criminal activity, attracting gangsters from such diverse and faraway places as Albania, China, Italy, and Ukraine. He was not talking about Venezuela, Mexico, Colombia, or Brazil. No, Jay Bergman, the DEA’s Andean regional director, was describing Ecuador, a small nation of 15 million people that is tucked between two of the largest cocaine-producing countries on earth. “If I’m an Italian organized drug trafficker and I want to meet with my Colombian counterpart,” Bergman told Reuters, “I would probably prefer to meet in Ecuador than to meet in Colombia.”

Last October, Ecuadorean police busted a pair of drug networks with Eastern European connections. Several weeks later, former Ecuadorean military intelligence chief Mario Pazmiño estimated that the number of maritime routes used for shipping drugs out of the country had increased by 90 percent since 2005. “Even if the increase ... Read More

BY NATHAN GILL

Rafael Correa, Ecuador’s first elected president since 1996 to finish his term, is poised to win re-election Feb. 17 as voters reward him for using the OPEC nation’s oil wealth to boost spending on social welfare.

The former economics professor was running ahead of the opposition with 62 percent of those surveyed saying they planned to re-elect him, according to a Feb. 5 poll, after pledging to “radicalize” his “citizens’ revolution” with free education and health care.

As the head of a nation where about one in three of its 15.4 million citizens live in poverty, Correa defaulted on $3.2 billion of bonds in 2008 and pushed through laws nationalizing the country’s oil reserves during his first two terms in office. While the moves provided short-term gains, the 49-year-old Correa, an ally of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, is now paying the cost with stagnant crude output and declines in private investment needed ... Read More

BY EDUARDO GARCIA

Ecuador’s leftist President Rafael Correa is the clear favorite to win an election on Sunday thanks to strong support from the poor majority that has benefited from hefty state spending on welfare projects and infrastructure.

Here are some key facts about Correa and Ecuador:

* Correa was born in 1963 to a lower middle-class family in the port city of Guayaquil. He earned an economics degree from the local university before winning scholarships in Belgium and the United States, where he received his doctorate in 2001.

* He took office in 2007 promising a “Citizens’ Revolution” to boost state revenue from Ecuador’s natural resources and redistribute wealth among the poor.

* Correa defaulted on billions of dollars of foreign debt in 2008, a move that alienated foreign investors but was applauded by locals. He backed the re-writing of Ecuador’s constitution to tilt the balance of power toward the executive, and won re-election ... Read More

BY JOHN OTIS

In the South American nation of Ecuador, President Rafael Correa is heavily favored to win a third term in the February 17 election. But if he does, it could mean four more years of trouble for the Ecuadorian media.

Correa is targeting TV, radio and newspapers with lawsuits, fines and insults. All this from a president who offered political asylum to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in the interests of freedom of expression. Now press freedom groups describe Ecuador as one of the hemisphere’s most restrictive nations for the media.

“There was more press freedom under Ecuador’s military dictatorship in the 1970s than there is today under the democratically elected government of Rafael Correa,” according to veteran journalist Miguel Ribadeneira, who heads one of Ecuador’s largest radio stations.

“This government is the worst.”

Since he was first elected in 2006, President Correa has complained about sloppy, unprofessional journalism. He claims many of the ... Read More

BY URI FRIEDMAN

The Committee to Protect Journalists may believe that “freedom of expression is under siege in Ecuador,” and Freedom House may give Ecuador poor marks for press freedom, but Argentina’s Universidad Nacional de La Plata apparently disagrees. On Tuesday, the university awarded Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa the Rodolfo Walsh Prize for battling the “hegemoic will that tries to restrict speech” and for enabling the “poor and marginalized sectors of society” to express themselves, in part by helping create the Latin American television network teleSUR and enshrining communication as a right in the country’s constitution and laws.

Americas Quarterly points out the contradictions in the university bestowing the prize — one named after an investigative journalist who was killed in the 1970s during Argentina’s “Dirty War” — on Correa, who has repeatedly locked horns with Ecuador’s private news outlets:

The U.S. government has long criticized Correa’s record on freedom of speech, and granted political asylum to the Ecuadorian journalist Emilio ... Read More

Wikileaks renegade Julian Assange seems to be genetically incapable of staying out of trouble. Holed up now for some five months in the Ecuadorean embassy in London to evade police questioning on sexual assault charges, the self-styled paladin of transparency and free expression appeared on CNN for an interview with host Erin Burnett and wound up insulting his Ecuadorean hosts.

Fumbling about to answer an obvious question on how he reconciled his seeking the political protection of a country whose president, Rafael Correa, has one of the worst track records against a free press in the hemisphere, Assange asserted he did not want to talk about “little things in small countries,” and, when Burnett persisted, dismissed the situation of press freedom in Ecuador, because it is “not a significant world player.”

Yet even as Assange strained mightily to change the subject from his hypocritical embrace of the Correa government, the latter is showing no ... Read More

Erin Burnett engaged in a heated argument with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Thursday, when she grilled him over reports that he is ill and human rights issues in Ecuador.

Assange has been granted asylum by Ecuador and is currently seeking refuge in London at the Ecuador embassy. It was recently reported that he is suffering from a lung infection. On Wednesday, Burnett interviewed him about his new book and asked him if the reports were true (starts at 7:00 mark in the clip above).

“Julian Assange is not very important,” he responded, before attempting to shift the conversation back to the book. When she pressed him to answer the question, he said, “I don’t think it’s important.”

She moved on to another issue: human rights in Ecuador, the country that has granted him asylum. “When you talk about governments clamping down on people’s right to speak, Ecuador is an unlikely champion of your ... Read More

BY ANDRES SCHIPANI

Banks in Ecuador are bracing themselves for a new tax on the sector designed to boost welfare payments by about $150m a year.

A bill paving the way for the tax is expected before Ecuador’s congress in the next few weeks, where it is likely to be waved through by legislators hoping to be returned to congress at general elections in February.

It was unveiled last month, shortly before Rafael Correa, Ecuador’s president, launched his campaign for election to a third term last weekend.

“We’ve done a lot but there’s a lot more to be done, to turn this bourgeois state into a truly popular state that would serve everyone, especially the poor,” Correa (pictured) said at a gathering of the ruling Alianza País coalition in a football stadium in Quito.

Correa, who first came to power in 2007 could easily win, forging ahead with his “citizens’ revolution”. A recent a survey by Cedatos, a ... Read More

Ecuador’s leftist President Rafael Correa on Saturday said he will run for re-election in February 2013.

Here are some key facts about Correa and Ecuador:

Correa was born in 1963 to a lower middle-class family in the port city of Guayaquil. He earned an economics degree from the local university before winning scholarships in Belgium and the United States, where he received his doctorate in 2001.

He took office in 2007 promising a “Citizens’ Revolution” to boost state revenue from Ecuador’s natural resources and redistribute wealth among the poor.

Correa defaulted on billions of dollars of foreign debt in 2008, a move that alienated foreign investors, but was applauded by locals. He backed the re-writing of Ecuador’s constitution to tilt the balance of power towards the executive, and won re-election in 2009.

After the default, Correa strengthened financial ties with China, and debt commitments to the Asian country total about $7.3 billion, including loans, advance payments ... Read More

Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa has announced he will run for a third term in February’s elections.

Tens of thousands of Mr Correa’s supporters gathered at a stadium in the capital, Quito, for the announcement.

The left-wing leader, who is facing a divided and weakened opposition, is expected to win the vote.

Mr Correa has been in power since 2007 and already been re-elected once – the first time for an Ecuadorean president in more than 30 years.

“We’ve done a lot but there’s a lot more to be done, to turn this bourgeois state into a truly popular state that would serve everyone, especially the poor,” Mr Correa said as he accepted the nomination.

Wearing predominantly the green colour of Mr Correa’s Alianza Pais (Country Alliance) movement, supporters at the Aucas stadium chanted: “We’ve got a president, we’ve got Rafael”.

Strategic Affairs Secretary Jorge Glas has been announced as the vice-presidential candidate.

Assange controversy

Rafael Correa, a ... Read More

BY GONZALO SOLANO

QUITO, Ecuador — Not all journalists are created equal in the eyes of Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa.

To the leftist leader, Australian-born Julian Assange is a truth-teller who deserves praise and protection as he knocks down the walls of government secrets. Correa has even offered asylum to the founder of the website Wikileaks and sheltered him for the past month inside Ecuador’s Embassy in London from arrest on sex crime allegations.

Journalist Cesar Ricaurte, however, is another story for the 49-year-old president.

Correa has been fighting a running battle with Ricaurte, head of the country’s main press freedom organization Fundamedios, and calling him a tool of the opposition media and the U.S. government.

Just this year, the president has used nine special government broadcasts to pre-empt all regularly scheduled TV programming to condemn Ricaurte. His alleged crime? Telling the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights that Correa is a bully who tries to ... Read More

BY TIM PADGETT

As I write in the international edition of TIME, and as Girish Gupta wrote last week on TIME.com, Venezuela’s burgeoning violent crime will be a key factor in the Oct. 7 presidential election. The baffling inability of socialist President Hugo Chávez, who controls the world’s largest oil reserves, to rein in a murder rate that by some estimates is four times higher than when he took office 13 years ago, including some 50 homicides a week in Caracas, has rankled Venezuelan voters. Chávez wasn’t helped last Sunday when two supporters of his centrist challenger, Miranda state Governor Henrique Capriles Radonski, were shot and killed in Chávez’s home state of Barinas, allegedly by Chávez backers who were blocking a Capriles campaign caravan.

A third victim, also a Capriles supporter, is in critical condition. Chávez urged Venezuelans to “confront each other with votes, not violence,” but he just as quickly took the polarizing low road ... Read More

Supporters of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange face a wait to see if they will be asked to forfeit £140,000 of bail sureties after he sought asylum.

Mr Assange has been at Ecuador’s London embassy since June, a move which has seen other backers lose £200,000 they put up in cash securities.

The 41-year-old breached bail conditions by staying in the building and faces arrest if he leaves.

Westminster Magistrates’ Court is to issue a written decision later.

Mr Assange was arrested on an extradition warrant and is wanted for questioning in Sweden over rape and sexual assault allegations, which he denies.

Ecuador granted Mr Assange asylum in August but the UK says it has a legal obligation to see that he is handed over to Sweden.

Swedish prosecutors, meanwhile, have dismissed Mr Assange’s claims that their case is part of a wider political move to see him stand trial in the US over his work ... Read More

BY SARAH KINOSIAN

LIMA, PERU

Ecuador said Wednesday that Julian Assange could be holed up in the Latin American nation’s embassy in London for 10 years or longer if a diplomatic solution is not reached.

Today marks 100 days since the Wikileaks founder requested asylum in Ecuador’s embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning on sexual assault and rape allegations.

The Ecuadorian government is not backing down on what they see as a fight for human rights, free speech, and state sovereignty against imperialist powers.

The United Kingdom has threatened to arrest Mr. Assange should he leave the embassy, citing its obligation to fulfill the Swedish extradition request, while Ecuador has remained strong in its support of Assange, creating a diplomatic gridlock between the three nations.

Many question why the Latin American nation continues to advocate for the controversial whistle-blower, as the affair has brought much negative attention to Ecuador’s own human rights and freedom of speech record, as ... Read More

BY ERIC MARTIN & NATHAN GILL

QUITO, Ecuador — Ecuador President Rafael Correa is emerging from the shadow of Venezuelan mentor Hugo Chavez as his decision to grant asylum to WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange plunges relations with the U.S. to new lows.

While such a tactic may boost his chances of re-election in February, the political gain may spell economic loss for Ecuador, as harboring Assange sparks reprisals from the South American nation’s top trade partner, said Cynthia Arnson, Latin America program director at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Ecuador’s economy, about the size of Nebraska’s, benefited from $1.7 billion in duty-free exports to the United States last year under the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act. Protecting Assange, who published classified U.S. military cables over the internet, is the latest in a series of conflicts with the U.S., including ties with Iran, which top U.S. lawmakers say justify re-imposing ... Read More

BY JAIME DAREMBLUM

As of this writing, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange remains holed up in Ecuador’s London embassy, which is surrounded by British police waiting to arrest and extradite him to Sweden where he faces multiple charges of sexual assault. Assange first entered the embassy in June and formally received asylum in mid-August. He fears that extradition to Sweden will ultimately be followed by extradition to the United States, which is eager to prosecute him for leaking more than 250,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables. But thanks to Ecuadorean president Rafael Correa, who has championed Assange’s cause, Assange’s day of reckoning in court has been postponed indefinitely.

I’m sure most Americans following the embassy saga have asked the same questions: why on earth is Ecuador harboring an international fugitive with Australian citizenship? Why is a small, impoverished, export-dependent South American country deliberately antagonizing the United States and the United Kingdom in order to protect such an ... Read More

BY KARIN WASTESON

Since president Rafael Correa took office, his new measures have made Ecuador one of the countries in the world with the lowest press freedom scores at the moment. Reporters Without Borders reports that at least 17 broadcast media channels have been shut down since the beginning of the year. The Washington Post has called it “the most comprehensive and ruthless assault on free media underway in the Western hemisphere.” The only countries in South America with more restrictive media laws are Venezuela and Cuba.

Arch Puddington, Vice President for Research at Freedom House, is an expert on democratic governance, as well as media and internet freedom. According to him, since Correa came to power he is suppressing political opponents in two ways; firstly by pursuing major libel and slander cases including criminal libel charges against domestic press outlets, and secondly by closing down opposition media. In their place, Correa ... Read More

About This Event

Post-Event Summary

In the run-up to Ecuador’s February 2012 elections, President Rafael Correa has strategically aimed to portray himself as a leader of the left, said Gustavo Palacio of Ecuador Democracy International at an AEI event on Tuesday. Palacio claimed the political asylum that Ecuador has provided to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has allowed Correa to position himself accordingly.

Palacio joined Roger Noriega of AEI, Jose Cardenas of Cardenas Strategic Solutions and Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research to discuss the ramifications of Correa’s offer of asylum to Assange and the president’s continuous attack on freedom of the press in Ecuador. Weisbrot argued that it is a misrepresentation to characterize Ecuador as a country without freedom of the press, considering the media itself functions as a political actor.

Cardenas alleged that in Russia, China and Iran, there are legitimate threats to freedom of speech; however, instead of targeting these countries ... Read More

The president of Ecuador is fighting a running battle with Cesar Ricaurte, head of the country’s main press freedom organization Fundamedios, and has called him a tool of the opposition media and the U.S. government.

Meanwhile, the president has heavily backed Julian Assange, head of WikiLeaks, calling him a truth-teller who deserves praise.

Evidently, to the eyes of Ecuador President Rafael Correa, not all journalists are created equal.

For Ricaurte, the president has used nine special government broadcasts to pre-empt all regularly scheduled TV programming to condemn him. Ricaurte’s alleged crime? Telling the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights that Correa is a bully who tries to silence journalists he dislikes.

The leftist leader has decided to give the Australian-born Assange praise as he knocks down the walls of government secrets. Correa has even offered Assange asylum and sheltered him for the past month inside Ecuador’s Embassy in London from arrest on sex crime allegations.

That disparate treatment points to what critics ... Read More

QUITO, Ecuador — Not all journalists are created equal in the eyes of Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa.

To the leftist leader, Australian-born Julian Assange is a truth-teller who deserves praise and protection as he knocks down the walls of government secrets. Correa has even offered asylum to the founder of the website Wikileaks and sheltered him for the past month inside Ecuador’s Embassy in London from arrest on sex crime allegations.

Journalist Cesar Ricaurte, however, is another story for the 49-year-old president.

Correa has been fighting a running battle with Ricaurte, head of the country’s main press freedom organization Fundamedios, and calling him a tool of the opposition media and the U.S. government.

Just this year, the president has used nine special government broadcasts to pre-empt all regularly scheduled TV programming to condemn Ricaurte. His alleged crime? Telling the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights that Correa is a bully who tries to silence journalists ... Read More