Quito, June 21 (AFP/APP): Police used tear gas Tuesday to disperse hundreds of Ecuadorans protesting in the capital Quito on the ninth day of Indigenous-led fuel price protests that the military described as a “grave threat.”
Some 500 protesters among thousands who arrived in the capital from around the country in recent days blockaded a key road with burning tree branches.
Dispersed with tear gas, they quickly regrouped to march with watery eyes on the CCE culture center — traditionally used by Indigenous people to launch protests but requisitioned by police on Sunday to use as a base.
“The objective of today is to retake the Casa de la Cultura,” protester Wilson Mazabanda told AFP before police used mace for a second time to break up the group.
Earlier Tuesday, Defense Minister Luis Lara said Ecuador’s democracy “faces a grave threat from… people who are preventing the free movement of the majority of Ecuadorans” with widespread road blockades.
Flanked by the heads of the army, navy and air force, Lara warned that the armed forces “will not allow attempts to break the constitutional order or any action against democracy and the laws of the republic.”
Called by the powerful Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (Conaie), demonstrations since June 13 have seen roads barricaded nationwide at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars to the economy.
Dozens of people have been injured.
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