A report from the Fundamedios organization indicates that a total of 131 journalists were attacked during the 11 days of widespread protests in Ecuador.
According to the document, most of the attacks were committed by protesters and by the public force.
There were physical, but also verbal, aggressions of coverage, detentions and damage to equipment.
“We have mainly recorded physical and verbal aggression that triggered harassment,” added Fundamedios, which also accounted for 20 attacks against media facilities.
Meanwhile, a dozen journalists were summoned, on the morning of this Monday, October 14, 2019, in rejection of physical and verbal aggressions received during the national strike in Ecuador.
The professionals met in the Plaza San Francisco, in downtown Guayaquil, with posters with phrases such as: “We are not sold or corrupt press”, “We are journalists and not criminals” or “Peace is not in an agreement, peace it is in the sensitization of a whole town ”.
On the cards, there were also images of some of the attacks that were recorded in amateur videos or the same media, for example the one suffered by Freddy Paredes, a Teleamazonas journalist, when leaving the Agora of the House of Culture, in Quito .
The guayaquileño reporter Antonio González said that “we went out to do our job.
We have our family waiting at home. In the capital, there were companions who were used as human shields and forced to record. There were excesses by both the uniformed and the protesters. ”
Manuel Maila, another journalist, urged citizens to leave behind the epithets inherited by the previous government of “corrupt press” or “hit men of ink”.
“We do our job of informing, we are not to blame for the problems in the country.”
Maricela Franco took the opportunity to request security from the risky work being done.
“There are not even penalties for those who assaulted the social communicators. It is good that there is an agreement and that peace can return, but it is not necessary to leave without sanction those who participated in acts of vandalism such as looting. There are many people who lost everything. ”
Source: https://www.eltelegrafo.com.ec/noticias/judicial/12/periodistas-rechazo-agresiones
