It has been almost 16 years since William and Roberto Isaías left Ecuador to settle in South Florida. Their case had been forgotten in the last year, but it was the United Nations, and more specifically its Human Rights Committee, that made the news this week after issuing a defining resolution on the issue last June. It establishes that the Ecuadorian State has violated the fundamental rights of William Isaias and Roberto Isaías.
In order to understand the implications of this resolution, Latin Business Daily ("LBD") spoke with Roberto Isaías himself, who receives us at his offices in downtown Miami.
LBD: What are the consequences for you and your brother William with this United Nations resolution?
Roberto Isaías: The implications for me and my family are diverse. At the legal level, the UN resolution is unequivocal: the Ecuadorian State must compensate the assets and companies that were unjustly confiscated from us in 2008, during the first government of Rafael Correa. The UN ruling also serves to ratify that we were not wrong to seek justice outside Ecuador. To give you an example, a series of laws and decrees were specifically designed to harm the Isaias Group.
LBD: What were those laws?
Roberto Isaías: I refer among others to the infamous Mandate 13, issued by Rafael Correa's Constituent Assembly. There it is established as the law of the nation that the arbitrary seizure of our companies has no possibility of being contested before any Ecuadorian court. Several prominent jurists of the continent have affirmed that Mandate 13 is the greatest juridical outburst in the history of Latin America, since it is a law with constitutional rank that eliminates the right to due process. Mandate 13 will have very high costs for Rafael Correa's propaganda apparatus, which for all these years has been determined to demonize my family.
LBD: Why?
Roberto Isaías: Because I insist, among other things, this UN resolution obliges the Ecuadorian State to compensate all the assets and companies seized from our family. Let us remember that the ruling of the Human Rights Committee has binding power over the Ecuadorian State. It is an order they must comply with.
LBD: What other implications does the UN Resolution have?
Roberto Isaías: The United Nations ruling confirms what we have denounced over all these years: that Correa and his judges have presumed guilt and not innocence, that a number of sentences have been handed down without evidence to support them, and that we have been totally deprived of our right to self-defense.
LBD: Do you believe that with this sentence from the Human Rights Committee, the persecution of the Isaias Brothers will cease?
Roberto Isaías: Political persecution, I would add, since another of the issues revealed by this UN resolution is that the Isaias family has been the object of implacable political persecution, unleashed with perversity by the regime of Rafael Correa. Let us remember that the main objective of the so-called Citizen Revolution of Correa in relation to the Isaias, was not so much to strip us of our companies, some of them decades old, but to confiscate our television channels to strengthen the state of propaganda of Correa’s regime.
LBD: But I insist, do you believe then that the political persecution will cease?
Roberto Isaías: I truly hope so. The UN oficial order is very clear. The Human Rights Committee ruled in favor of the Isaias. It has been fully established that the Correa’s regime trample on my human rights and those of my brother William and that all of our property must be returned because it was arbitrarily seized.
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