President of Ecuador denounces “rude” interference of Maduro in Colombia

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The president of Ecuador, Lenín Moreno, denounced in Miami that his Venezuelan counterpart, Nicolás Maduro, has “grossly” interfered in the protests being held in Colombia against the government of Iván Duque to “destabilize” the country.

Moreno, the keynote speaker at the forum “Defense of Democracy in the Americas”, said in an interview to the Nuevo Herald newspaper that “there is certain evidence” of such interference in the demonstrations that began last April 28 and have left at least 11 dead.

He pointed out that Venezuela is intervening in Colombia to destabilize the Government and implement a system like the one they have.

“To protect witnesses, we cannot give you more details,” he said in the interview published Thursday in the Miami newspaper.

During the forum, held on Wednesday, organized by the Inter-American Institute for Democracy, Moreno anticipated such Venezuelan interference in Colombia.

“Ecuador’s intelligence organizations have detected the gross interference, something that the president of Colombia already knew, and that I told him in the morning (Wednesday), the gross interference of the dictator Maduro from the bloody hands of that dictator,” he said at the forum.

Moreno pointed out in the forum that “social protest is not violence”, but called on the leaders of the region to ask “in a synchronized manner (…) for a stop to the violence in Colombia and for Maduro to remove his bloody hands from the Colombian people”.

According to the Attorney General’s Office, demonstrations against Duque’s government began on April 28 and have so far left 11 dead, although social organizations raise that figure to 37.

Moreno told the newspaper that agents who encourage violence were also detected in other Latin American countries during the demonstrations that shook the region in October 2019.

He added that authorities had detected a process of coordination of efforts to destabilize the different democracies in the region involving “pseudo-intellectuals,”, politicians and businessmen.

“They act in coordination, synchronized, to conspire against democratic processes,” he stressed.

During the protests, the demonstrators have blocked numerous highways in different parts of the country, preventing trucks loaded with food and supplies and even ambulances and medical personnel.