AIL: For those murdered, imprisoned, and disappeared in the struggle, long live heroism day!

FOR THOSE MURDERED, IMPRISONED, AND DISAPPEARED IN THE STRUGGLE,

LONG LIVE HEROISM DAY!

From the Anti-Imperialist Front of Ecuador, we extend our militant, revolutionary, and internationalist greetings as we commemorate another June 19, the Day of Heroism-a date sealed in blood and fire by the stoic resistance of the prisoners of war in Peru, who, on June 19, 1986, rose up in defense of the revolution and their lives against the reactionaries’ plans to annihilate them and deal a decisive blow to the people’s war.

On this solemn occasion, of great historical significance for the Communist Party of Peru, the People’s War, and the oppressed classes and peoples of the world; we recognize the steadfast and stoic resistance of the prisoners of war incarcerated in the Luminous Combat Trenches-the “prisons of Peru”-as a clear message of the capacity for struggle and the ultimate sacrifice that those truly committed to the struggle, the conquest of power, and the crushing defeat of imperialism are willing to make.

Indeed, taking advantage of this commemoration of Heroism Day, we call on revolutionary, popular, workers’, peasant, student, women’s, human rights, anti-imperialist, and democratic organizations around the world to launch, on June 19, a militant international campaign of denunciation, solidarity, and political demands in response to the crimes of the old Ecuadorian state.

We denounce before the country and the world the cruel torture, sexual assault, abuse, isolation, and degrading treatment to which comrade Omar Campoverde has been subjected in the maximum-security prison known as “El Encuentro”-a veritable concentration camp created and maintained, under Zionist doctrine, by the criminal Noboa regime; today, a brutal expression of the repressive policies of the old Ecuadorian state.

We also denounce the illegal imprisonment of our comrade Gabriela Gallardo and Carlos Carguachi, against whom the old state has acted with despicable cruelty, in a futile attempt to break their fighting spirit and send a message of intimidation to the country’s grassroots activists.

Likewise, we demand in a combative manner that the bureaucratic-landowner state be held accountable for the disappearance of the popular activist Michelle Montenegro, who has been missing for five years now, leaving an open wound caused by impunity, repression, and the old state’s contempt for the lives of the people.

Let us make the world know that, in Ecuador, the State murders children-as in the case of “The Four of Las Malvinas”; it is an accomplice to the criminal violence that massacres our people on a daily basis; it illegally prosecutes popular activists; it persecutes, imprisons, and tortures them, and exposes them to imminent death. That this same old State also makes popular activists disappear.