Latin Press and Reuters

The newspaper La Jornada
Thursday, August 15, 2024, p. 26

Quito. The forensic center in the Ecuadorian city of Guayaquil was declared in a state of emergency due to the increase in violent deaths and failures in the refrigeration equipment for corpses, local media reported yesterday.

The measure, decreed by the National Service of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences, will be in effect for 60 days with the aim of urgently acquiring equipment for repower the refrigeration chambers and put a cold room into operationRadio Pichincha said.

In July, 100 bodies in an apparent state of decomposition were found in the parking lot of the Criminalistics and Forensic Sciences Laboratory in that coastal city, in the province of Guayas.

At the beginning of June, the morgue was in a serious health situation after two of the three refrigerators containing dozens of human remains were damaged.

Some relatives of the deceased reported that they had to identify their relatives from the decomposed bodies.

In the coastal city of Guayaquil, there were 3,762 violent deaths in 2023, amid the existing security crisis in the country resulting from clashes between gangs linked to drug trafficking, according to official data. In this context of rising homicides, many bodies remain unclaimed and there is not enough space to keep them.

Ecuador is suffering a security crisis, mainly in coastal provinces, and although the government of conservative President Daniel Noboa claims that the number of homicides has decreased, violence persists.

Security experts warn that the implementation of militarization will not serve much purpose if social measures are not adopted to reduce inequality.

In another matter, the Noboa government pointed out that Vice President Verónica Abad’s request for the electoral court to remove the president is an attempt to coup d’état.

Noboa and Abad have had a tense relationship since the beginning of the former’s term in November 2023.

Abad has been living in Tel Aviv since last year, where Noboa sent her to support peace efforts between Israel and Hamas.

The vice president sued Noboa for political gender violence, saying that he has marginalized her and harmed the equal representation of women in his government.

In a statement, the government described Abad’s complaint as crude attempt at destabilization and blatantly constitutes a clear attempt at a coup d’état.