Mexican Foreign Affairs Secretary Alicia Bárcena at a press conference on April 11, 2024. Photo: X/@aliciabarcena.
Mexico requested the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that Ecuador be suspended from the United Nations until its government issues a public apology for the violent assault on the Mexican embassy in Quito and the Mexican diplomatic staff by Ecuadorian security forces.
At Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s daily press conference on Thursday, April 11, Foreign Affairs Secretary Alicia Bárcena informed the press that the Mexican government has submitted a complaint before the ICJ, asking that Ecuador apologize and recognize the violations of the fundamental principles and norms of international law that it committed, in order to make reparations for the moral damage inflicted on the Mexican State and its citizens who served at the Mexican diplomatic mission in Ecuador.
Presenting a summary of the grounds and content of Mexico’s lawsuit at the ICJ, Bárcena said that Mexico wants the international justice system to establish the precedent that any State that acts as Ecuador did will be definitively expelled from the UN.
President López Obrador added that Mexico is seeking to prevent similar situations from happening again in the future.
“What Mexico is doing by instructions of the president, is putting to test the multilateral system,” said Bárcena. She added that the world is experiencing serious violations of international law and that is why Mexico wants to set a precedent with this lawsuit against the government of Daniel Noboa.
Asked about what consequences there could be directly for President Noboa, Bárcena said that given the seriousness of the aggression, Mexico is analyzing the possibility of filing criminal charges against Ecuadorian government officials. “Ecuador and its own people will have to decide what Noboa’s political future is,” she added.
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The legal advisor of the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs of Mexico, Alejandro Celorio, said that Request for Initiation of Proceedings filed before the ICJ is based on the fact that Ecuador, with its assault on the Mexican embassy, violated the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, of which both Mexico and Ecuador are signatories, and which states that diplomatic premises and diplomatic personnel are inviolable without exceptions.
Regarding Ecuador’s violations of the Inter-American conventions on asylum by detaining inside the Mexican embassy former Ecuadorian Vice President Jorge Glas, whom Mexico continues to consider a political asylee, Celorio said that Mexico is seeking legal alternatives to file complaints on Ecuador’s non-compliance.
Celorio explained that a Mexican legal delegation delivered the complaint to the ICJ on Thursday, and that Ecuador and Mexico will have to present their arguments in the coming months. He added that Mexico has demanded that Ecuador give guarantees for the protection of the embassy building in Quito, which was left empty after Mexico suspended diplomatic relations with Ecuador and the Mexican diplomatic personnel departed.
Regarding the Mexicans who have expressed their support for Ecuador and have even apologized to the Ecuadorian government for the steps that the Mexican government has adopted, such as the opposition Senator Lily Telléz, President López Obrador commented that “fortunately they are a minority.”
The president recalled that at different times in history there have been Mexicans who have been in favor of foreign interests. “Conservatism always acts like that, of course, there are extreme cases like the ones we are seeing now, but most of the political forces in Mexico have condemned Ecuador’s actions,” he said.
Regarding Ecuadorian Interior Minister Mónica Palencia, who is Mexican and naturalized Ecuadorian, López Obrador stated that he is not contemplating taking any measures against her, because “Mexico is a country of liberties.”
Meanwhile, amid the outcry and widespread condemnation against the actions of the Ecuadorian government, President Daniel Noboa has left Ecaudor and traveled to the United States “for personal reasons.”
(La Jornada) by Arturo Sánchez Jimenez y Alonso Urrutia, with Orinoco Tribune content
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
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