Three bodies that could belong to two Ecuadoran journalists and a driver for newspaper El Comercio were found in Colombia, 88 days after the team was abducted near the border of the two countries.
"With deep regret, I regret to report that the assassination of our compatriots has been confirmed," Ecuadorian President Lenín Moreno wrote on his Twitter account on the early afternoon of Friday, April 13. The president publicly confirmed the death of the two journalists and the driver from newspaper El Comercio, who were kidnapped at the end of March by a dissident group of the FARC.
Two journalists with the Ecuadorian newspaper El Comercio and their driver, who authorities say were abducted on March 26 by FARC dissident groups, were shown alive in a video broadcast on Colombian station RCN. The abduction took place close to a military checkpoint in Mataje, in the Ecuadorian province of Esmeraldas that borders the Colombian border, according to El Comercio.
A team of three journalists from Ecuadoran newspaper El Comercio were abducted on March 26 in northern Ecuador in Mataje in the province of Esmeraldas near the country’s border with Colombia.
Ecuadoran Secretary of Communication Andrés Michelena confirmed that new President Lenin Moreno’s government is not contributing economically to multi-state owned cable news channel Telesur, newspaper La Hora reported.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has recommended the creation of a communications monitoring council independent of political and commercial interests in Ecuador, reported El Universo.
Journalist and political activist Fernando Villavicencio and former congressman Cléver Jiménez, who were prosecuted criminally at the beginning of 2014 after being taken to court by then-Ecuadoran president Rafael Correa as a result of a journalistic investigation, were declared innocent on Feb. 22 by the Criminal Court of the National Court of Justice.
Journalists, lawyers, academics and human rights activists from Ecuador have announced the formation of the Democratic Group for the Reforms of the Organic Law of Communication (LOC).
Freedom of expression advocates are looking for answers after a British journalist hoping to cover the World Trade Organization conference in Buenos Aires was deported from Argentina. At dawn on Dec. 8, Sally Burch was sent back to Quito, Ecuador where she works as executive-editor at Agencia Latinoamericana de Información. According to the Guardian, she was included on a list of 63 people banned from attending the conference from Dec. 10 to 13.
Three Latin American journalists appear on the Committee to Protect Journalist’s (CPJ) annual census of journalists imprisoned around the world. Guatemalan Jerson Antonio Xitumul Morales, Ecuadoran Enrique Rosales Ortega and Venezuelan Braulio Jatar are three of the 262 journalists imprisoned around the world, according to the census, which was published Dec. 13.
“Innocent.” These were the words Ecuadorian journalist Martín Pallares used to summarize the judge’s decision in a July 3 hearing for a suit filed against the journalist by former President Rafael Correa. The ex-leader, who was not present at the hearing, sued Pallares on June 5 in response to an article he wrote.
When Ecuador approved the Organic Law of Communication (LOC for its acronym in Spanish) in 2013, different organizations inside and outside the country expressed concern about the negative effects that the standard could have on freedom of expression.