Kidnapping and Riots
If you have been following some of my posts, you have seen about the recent child abductions in Ecuador...things are getting worse and worse each day... About a week ago in one place a number of people were arrested, among them three members of the police force, presumably for kidnapping. A number of times, in several cases, the detainees have been liberated by the judicial system after being detained by the police. The problem is that they have never caught anyone actually with an abducted child. Sometimes they are able to recover the children and the abductors run, or sometimes they arrest them before the act, and there is no evidence. Three days ago, things came to a head in a costal town called Posorja (you can google some of the videos) where the populace caught three people who were supposedly trying to kidnap some kids...they managed to stop the taxi, and set it on fire, hoping to burn the perpetrators. The local detachment of the government police force arrived, and in force took the three people in custody into the police station in the town, with the people calling for justice outside.
The riot grew to over 2000 people; whom, tired of the injustice and rumors, turned violent. Fire bombs were thrown against the police station, as rioting took place elsewhere, and soon the police were overcome, and the rioters pulled the three prisoners out of the station, and burned them right there in the road, along with a number of police motorcycles.
By the time reinforcements came, the only thing left to do was clean up the ashes and make arrests. 8 people are currently in custody as instigators, and are awaiting trail, some of them for murder.
12 policemen have been wounded and are under observation.
However, most of the citizens are in agreement with the action that was taken by the mob, because although the official police report says that the three perpetrators, one woman and two men, were officially accused of theft, the witnesses saw them try to drive by and grab a few children.
There have been numerous occasions of people snatching children even from their parents hands in the middle of the day, or hanging around schools when the bell rings waiting to grab a child that is walking home alone; and the Ecuadorian people have had enough.
In the end, it is hard to tell what actually happened in Posorja...different news outlets and even different officials are telling different stories. And although it was illegal and lamentful what was done, in the face of the very real fear that we face in Ecuador for child abductions, supposedly for organ harvesting, things are only going to get worse.
Mark Blosser
