During the last decade, a journalist has been killed every four days. Experts agree that there is no interest in investigating and punishing these crimes.
The corruption of the political class and the lack of commitment to build efficient justice would be the main reasons why crimes against journalists continue, for the most part, in impunity. So affirms it Emmanuel Colombié, director of the Latin American office for Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
This November 2 marks for the eighth year the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists. Between 2006 and 2020, more than 1,200 journalists were killed around the world. About 9 out of 10 cases of these murders remain unsolved in court and in the last decade, a journalist has been killed on average every four days, according to figures from the Unesco Observatory of Murdered Journalists.
At the regional level, Colombié refers that the most dangerous countries, if we speak only of physical violence and murders to practice journalism, are Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, Colombia, where each year the attacks are recurrent. And on a global level, he emphasizes that it is in countries with open conflicts where numerous murders and attacks against journalists are observed, such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and Syria.
Cesar Ricaurte, journalist and director of the Andean Foundation for Media Observation and Study (Fundamedios), says that worldwide it has been seen that the level of impunity in crimes against journalists is around 90% and that in Latin America that figure rises to 98%.
“There is a massive level of impunity, there is no interest on the part of the States to investigate and punish crimes against journalists … Few cases are brought to justice and this is what it does is encourage the continued assault and murder of journalists. ”, He emphasizes.
For Jeannine Cruz, President of the Communication Council of Ecuador, “The impunity of attacks against journalists has a frightening effect on the exercise of the right to freedom of expression, not only for journalists, but also for citizens to prevent them from being informed.”
Cruz says that it is unfortunate that this leads to the establishment of ideas in the countries that there are issues that cannot be discussed.
Colombié agrees and emphasizes that “impunity is the basis of a vicious circle that fuels violence against the press” that sends a message to society that “they can attack, they can kill journalists and that nothing will happen. and this is very worrying and very serious ”.
Something that is increasingly worrying, according to Colombié, “It is the blocking of access to public information that was exacerbated during the pandemic” and ensures that many journalists have been prevented from working and from having information of public interest.
“Journalists face many challenges and difficulties to work, one of them is structural violence, especially in countries with a high level of corruption and organized crime violence, these communicators who are denouncing corruption at the local level and are making people uncomfortable. political, economic or religious powers are threatened, persecuted and attacked ”, he says.
Colombié also mentions that in the region “there is a toxic public discourse in leaders who try to present the press as the enemy of the people” and that this happens in Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and also in Mexico.
“A public discourse that instead of valuing the work of the independent press stigmatizes it every day and this generates a general disregard of journalists for the press and fear and self-censorship within the union itself,” he says.
For his part, Ricaurte states that the region is experiencing a very serious situation linked to the lack of interest and lack of will of the governments, lack of awareness of judicial operators of their fundamental role in guaranteeing freedom of expression and being truly protectors of journalists and the work of the press ”.
In the case of Ecuador, it says that the State Attorney General’s Office has not thoroughly investigated emblematic cases such as that of journalists from Trade, murdered in Colombia in 2018, or that of Fausto Valdiviezo, murdered in 2013.
Through Fundamedios, a pioneer organization for fifteen years in monitoring attacks against the press that have made visible the level of aggression that exists against the press in Ecuador, Ricaurte determines that, during the ten years of Rafael Correa’s government, “there was a systematic persecution against the press ”.
However, he says that if the figures are analyzed during the Lenín Moreno government, the attacks against the press continued despite registering a certain decline, and now with the coming to power of Guillermo Lasso, they persist.
Faced with these scenarios, he calls for this November 2 to be a date to raise awareness both locally, regionally and globally.
“It is a date for them to tell us that the judicial operators are going to take the work very seriously to protect the press, a very intense work is needed to train judges and prosecutors … the State has the obligation to protect the work of the press and cannot evade it ”, he points out.
To deal with this type of situation, Cruz, from the body he presides, affirms that his main objective is to prevent attacks on the union and develop a protection system for journalists during their work.
He mentions that during his tenure, which has been going on for about four months, they have signed agreements with the Ombudsman’s Office so that journalists have access to free legal advice and sponsorships against prosecution as a result of journalistic work or journalistic investigations.
The training of public defenders with international standards on the subject, that journalists are considered human rights defenders, that journalistic investigations are not affected in case of filing a complaint and starting a judicial process and a mapping of the red zones to Doing journalism are also among the points that Cruz seeks to implement in Ecuador for a freer and safer journalism.
Unpunished cases in Ecuador
According to Unesco reports, the deaths of six communication workers in the exercise of their profession have been recorded in Ecuador. They include Javier Ortega, Paúl Rivas and Efraín Segarra, members of the newspaper team Trade, kidnapped and murdered in 2018 on the northern border. The other cases are that of Fausto Valdiviezo, murdered in 2013, and those of José León and Saúl Suárez, who lost their lives in 2006. (I)
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