Killing of journalist underscores deteriorating conditions in Ecuador

Tomás Beltrán was manoeuvring his car into his garage on Sunday night when the Ecuadorian journalist was shot dead.

Beltrán ran a Facebook page with news about Calceta, a small city in the province of Manabí, whose Pacific coastline has made it a key flashpoint in the gang warfare over drug trafficking routes that has transformed one of Latin America’s safest countries into one of its most violent.

Police and the public prosecutor’s office have not said much about the case, and little was known about the killers except that they were armed and then fled the scene. It was also unclear whether the crime was linked to Beltrán’s work, though he had previously reported allegations of corruption involving local authorities.

Regardless, many press freedom groups already cite his murder as the latest example of how conditions for journalists have deteriorated dramatically in Ecuador. Six journalists were killed in the country last year alone.

Artur Romeu, Reporters Without Borders’ Latin America director, said in a statement that months ago Beltrán had told the organisation “about his fears and the threats he was receiving”.

“We took part in efforts to get him to safety,” he said, adding that Beltrán had been placed in a protection programme run by the public prosecutor’s office, although it was not known whether that protection was still in place when he was killed.

“Reporters Without Borders calls on the public prosecutor’s office to investigate as a priority whether there is a link to his journalistic work, identify any possible masterminds and protect his family and colleagues,” said Romeu.

The Ecuadorian civil society organisation Fundación Periodistas Sin Cadenas (FPSC) reported that at least 19 journalists have had to go into exile since gang violence exploded in 2023. Although Ecuador does not produce cocaine like neighbouring Colombia and Peru, it has become a major trafficking hub, particularly through the Pacific.

Journalists have received death threats with photographs of their homes and details of their routines and families.

“Practising journalism in Ecuador is now an extremely high-risk job,” said María Fernanda Almeida, a project coordinator at FPSC, adding that all of last year’s killings of journalists “remain completely unpunished”.

“And one of the many terrible effects of this violence is self-censorship: at least in the coastal provinces, colleagues no longer want to report on violence,” she added.

Almeida said another problem for journalists has been the stance of the government of the far-right president Daniel Noboa, who has responded to the surge in crime with a controversial “iron-fist” approach to the gangs, repeatedly declaring states of emergency and expanding the role of the armed forces in measures that have been widely criticised by human rights groups.

While covering military operations, reporters have had their phones confiscated, a search warrant was executed at a reporter’s home and a journalist was threatened by soldiers simply for filming them stopping university students.

There have also been several reports that Noboa, one of US president Donald Trump’s key allies in Latin America, has pressured media organisations to dismiss journalists critical of him, including the columnist Roberto Aguilar, who said he was fired from the newspaper Diario Expreso after the government reportedly threatened private advertisers with audits if they continued advertising with the outlet.

Noboa’s administration did not respond to requests for comment.

“I don’t think there is complete freedom of expression in Ecuador today,” said Almeida. “And that is very worrying because the more violence and silencing there is, the more journalism is needed.”