“68 civil society groups call on Ecuadorian President to end persecution of civil society and indigenous activists  oppsing extractive projects”, 18 January 2017

...The letter also calls for the removal of all legal and policy measures limiting these communities’ fundamental rights to association, assembly and expression. “The government has responded to the indigenous communities’ legitimate demands for consultation with mounting repression and further restrictions on fundamental freedoms,” said Marlon Vargas, President of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon (CONFENIAE). “Indigenous community leaders and organisations resisting the advances of extractive industries and demanding the implementation of consultation mechanisms for the expression of their communities’ free, prior and informed consent are being routinely criminalised and judicially harassed,” Vargas added. Most recently...the government has declared a state of emergency suspending basic freedoms in the Morona Santiago province, and threatened to dissolve Acción Ecológica, a well-respected national organisation that has advocated for the rights of nature and the collective rights of peoples for nearly three decades...