Families of murdered Ecuadorians ask the IACHR for a research group

Ecuadornews:

Relatives of the three workers of the newspaper El Comercio, kidnapped and murdered by a dissident group of the FARC, asked the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to create a fact-finding group.

This was revealed by Ricardo Rivas, brother of photographer Paúl Rivas, a member of the journalist team kidnapped on March 26 when he was making a report in a border area with Colombia about the prevailing insecurity in the area.

Representatives of the family together with the Foundation for Freedom of the Press (FLIP) of Colombia and the Ecuadorian Andean Foundation for the Observation and Study of Media (Fundamedios), requested in a document addressed to the executive secretary of the IACHR, Paulo Abrão, the constitution of an Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI).

The objective, according to the letter dated Thursday, April 19, is that “information related to the kidnapping and murder of Javier Ortega, Paún Rivas and Efraín Segarra be investigated and made transparent, in circumstances that must be clarified.”

Relatives of the murdered Ecuadorians visited Washington this week and held meetings with human rights and press freedom organizations such as Human Rights Watch or Freedom House, as well as meeting with the OAS Secretary General, Luis Almagro, and the foreign ministers of Ecuador and Colombia , María Fernanda Espinosa and María Ángela Holguín.

According to Ricardo Rivas, the secretary general of the OAS “was very open” and showed “great interest in coordinating actions with the IACHR, to which they requested the formation of this independent international committee.”

The brother of the murdered photographer stressed that the fundamental interest of the families is the repatriation of the bodies of their loved ones, which still remain in the hands of their captors, who claimed that they suspended the delivery because the governments of Ecuador and Colombia “insist on the repression “, an allusion to the operations carried out by its security forces in the border area.

Regarding the research group, Rivas hoped that “it will not be delayed in time” and that it could take place next week as an independent body that will serve as “accompaniment to the research being carried out in Ecuador.”

He considered it “important to determine what the errors or inexperience have been” in the actions of the Ecuadorian authorities, as suggested by the president, Lenin Moreno, in an interview with an international media to which he said that “errors of good faith had occurred”.

In his opinion, during the kidnapping process “no international help was sought” and he criticized that “there are things that were not done well”, points that should clarify the commission in the making.

As a precedent, the IACHR established a working group that investigated the case of the 43 Mexican students who disappeared in 2014. (I)

Source: http://www.expreso.ec/actualidad/cidh-investigacion-periodistasasesinados-guerrillas-HE2143018