When 11-year-old Steven Medina and three teenage friends vanished after a December military roundup in Guayaquil, Ecuador’s army claimed it was “just doing its duty.” Their burned bodies said otherwise—and the nation now stares down the horror it tried to ignore.
Duty Isn’t a License
Six months into President Daniel Noboa’s so-called “internal armed conflict,” the bodies of four Black children told a story that stripped the word “duty” of any honor. Steven Medina, Ismael and Josué Arroyo, and Saúl Arboleda—ages 11 to 17—were picked up by soldiers in December. Their remains, burned and riddled with bullets to the head, were found weeks later.
At a habeas corpus hearing, the seventeen soldiers now facing charges insisted they were “fulfilling their duty” under Noboa’s emergency decree. But the court was unmoved. Ecuador’s Constitutional Court had already dismantled the foundation of that argument, ruling that no armed conflict exists in the legal sense—no two organized factions, no sustained hostilities. The soldiers’ appeal to battlefield logic collapsed under that ruling. This wasn’t war. This was murder.
International law is unambiguous: detaining minors without warrants, hiding their whereabouts, and delivering them back as corpses is not part of military protocol. It is a crime against humanity. Ecuador is not at war. But four children are dead, and the flag cannot be used to drape their graves in silence.
Ecuador Promised the World to Protect Children
The ink on Ecuador’s signature is still dry. The country ratified the Inter-American Convention on Forced Disappearance in 2005 and had already joined the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. These aren’t symbolic treaties—they’re blueprints for restraint. They say clearly: even in times of real war, children are not combatants. They are civilians. They are sacred.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights condemned the killings swiftly, demanding full prosecution. UN special rapporteurs echoed the outrage, asking Quito to explain how military patrols—unbound by judicial oversight—had taken over urban neighborhoods like Guayaquil’s Las Malvinas, where the four boys lived.
The soldiers’ defense? “We were following orders.” It is a phrase heavy with history. And it has been rejected by every human rights court since Nuremberg. There is no chain of command long enough to absolve those who harm children. Duty ends where humanity begins. And when that threshold is crossed, no uniform can shield the guilty.
Fuerza Aérea Ecuatoriana
A Law Written for Shielding Soldiers, Not Justice
In March, while public outrage was still catching its breath, lawmakers loyal to Noboa fast-tracked the Solidarity Law, which quietly but profoundly weakened justice. Buried in its clauses: a provision suspending pre-trial detention for police and soldiers accused of crimes during operations.
On paper, it was spun as a protection against frivolous lawsuits. In practice, it became a weapon for impunity.
Military attorneys now argue that anything done in a “security context” qualifies as state action, even when victims are schoolboys and evidence includes gunshot wounds and gasoline burns. Judge Dennis Ugalde, who refused bail for the accused, warned openly: this law, stretched as it is, “opens the door to impunity for all members of the security forces.“
If a government can’t guarantee justice for murdered children, it loses the right to claim moral authority. It’s not just about the army. It’s about what kind of country Ecuador chooses to be.
Fear Is Not a Justification
The four boys came from Las Malvinas, a Guayaquil neighborhood long painted as a gang haven, and they wore the poverty that makes some lives feel disposable to power.
Footage published by El País shows what happened: two army trucks surrounded them outside a shopping mall. Then—nothing. No warrants. No charges. Just disappearance.
Defense lawyers have leaned on old tricks: suggesting the boys were delinquents, that something about them—unspecified, undefined—made their deaths more understandable. However, months of investigation revealed no link to criminal activity, as confirmed by Reuters and OHCHR. Instead, three soldiers turned state witnesses, confessing that the boys were beaten, mocked, and then executed. Their bodies were later burned to conceal the evidence.
This was not a policing error. This was a deliberate use of terror against a racialized, marginalized group. What’s being prosecuted in court is not just murder. It is state violence dressed as security policy. And the silence of the state—its hesitation, its hedging—only deepens the injury.
Justice Can’t Be Delayed Without Being Denied
Ecuador need not look far to see what accountability can look like. In Colombia, after the “false positives” scandal—in which soldiers killed civilians and staged them as enemy combatants—the courts responded. Convictions came, careers ended, and public trust—however, fractured—began to repair.
Now it’s Ecuador’s turn.
The trial set for July will determine whether President Noboa’s rhetoric about zero tolerance for abuse is courage or convenience. Because if those accused walk free, the message to every patrol is chilling: Kill first. Justify later.
What’s needed is not political theatre. It’s action:
- Keep the accused behind bars as the trial proceeds.
- Amend the Solidarity Law so it cannot be a shield for crimes.
- Purge the armed forces of commanders who confuse teenagers with enemy combatants.
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Because, in the end, actual duty isn’t blind obedience. It’s fidelity to the law. To the people. And to the children who should still be alive. Until those uniforms are worn with accountability, not arrogance, Ecuador cannot claim to be fighting crime. It will only be fighting for justice.