Ecuador's Correa rebukes 'intrusions' by UN, Americas court

QUITO: Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa on Saturday rebuked requests by major international bodies for clarification on his anti-abortion position and decision to extract oil from an Amazon reserve.

The president revealed that his government had received letters from the UN and Inter-American Court of Human Rights pressing him on the matters, which he says are domestic.

Speaking on his weekly radio and television program, Correa said the inter-American court had inquired into the government’s controversial plans to extract oil in Yasuni Park.

The move is opposed by environmentalists and indigenous groups hoping to protect the UNESCO biosphere reserve.

Correa also said that a UN rapporteur had sent him a request to explain his anti-abortion position.

Last year Correa threatened to leave his majority-holding party if Congress decriminalized abortion in all cases of rape.

“Gentlemen, go mind your business and not the affairs of a sovereign country like Ecuador,” Correa said.

He also pointed to what he said was interference by the UN’s International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) in Uruguay’s recent decision to regulate the production and sale of marijuana. The body has said Uruguay’s move breaks international law.

But, Correa said, there was a lack of international criticism over legalised marijuana use in the United States where the states of Washington and Colorado have permitted citizens to use the drug recreationally.

“It’s a terrible double standard; they treat us like colonies,” the president, a leftist and economist by training, said. Her urged his countrymen to free themselves from “illegitimate and illegal intrusions by this international bureaucracy.” AFP