Ecuador jungle provinces in emergency over protests
Date: 26-Feb-02
Country: ECUADOR
The action is aimed at opening routes for supplies and allowing work on the pipeline to continue.
The move lets the government deploy troops and limit public meetings in oil-rich Sucumbios and Orellana provinces near Colombia's border, whose residents are protesting to seek more development funds from the company building the pipeline.
It follows Noboa's decision last week to declare Sucumbios - a poor province used as a safe-haven by Colombian rebels - in emergency to prepare for possible spillover from the breakdown of peace talks in Colombia.
Roads have been blocked in Sucumbios about 113 miles (180 km) east of Quito since Monday, halting area construction of a crude pipeline that is expected to more than double the country's oil output and buoy the economy.
The protests "are putting the population's security and property at risk, creating a serious internal commotion," said the decree, which was dated Friday and made public on the weekend.
"Halting the construction of the heavy crude pipeline affects the economy and the nation's development," it gave as another reason for the emergency.
Several local politicians and residents are leading protests to push pipeline builder OCP Ecuador SA to hand over more development funds for Amazon towns and villages where the duct will run.
OCP says it already signed an agreement with local authorities on development funds last year.
Demonstrations so far have remained peaceful but have blocked off a key highway linking Sucumbios with Ecuador's capital in the Andean highlands, making transport difficult and some goods scarce.
"It is affecting us. There's no traffic and it's been six days now that products can't come in," Sucumbios' provincial governor Victor Velasco told Reuters via telephone.
Ecuador bolstered border patrols in Sucumbios this week and is preparing for a potential influx of Colombian refugees since Bogota halted peace talks with its biggest guerrilla group and took back a former rebel enclave.