• Live
    • Audio Only
  • google plus
  • facebook
  • twitter
News > Latin America

Ecuador FM: Colombia Must Help Return Journalist Hostages

  • Colombian Foreign Minister, Maria Angela Holguin (l) and Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Maria Fernanda Espinosa (r) meet to discuss the kidnapping of journalist on Monday in Mataje, Ecuador along the border with Colombia. Colombian officials confirm FARC dissidents are responsible for the hostage taking.

    Colombian Foreign Minister, Maria Angela Holguin (l) and Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Maria Fernanda Espinosa (r) meet to discuss the kidnapping of journalist on Monday in Mataje, Ecuador along the border with Colombia. Colombian officials confirm FARC dissidents are responsible for the hostage taking. | Photo: Ecuadorean Foreign Minister's Office

Published 28 March 2018
Opinion

Foreign Minister Maria Fernanda Espinosa met with her Colombian counterpart to discuss kidnapping of journalists in the Mataje region of Ecuador, a few kilometers from the Colombian border.

Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Maria Fernanda Espinosa met with her Colombian counterpart, Maria Angela Holguin in a press conference to discuss Monday’s kidnapping of two journalists and their driver in the Mataje region of Ecuador, a few kilometres from the Colombian border.

RELATED: 
Colombian Army: FARC Dissident Group Abducted Ecuador Reporters

Colombian military officials stated today that FARC dissidents were behind the kidnapping.

"This (situation) is very worrying and painful. We’re doing everything so that something like this doesn’t happen again," said Espinosa, adding that she has written a formal letter to Holguin asking the Colombian government to fulfil its part of their recently signed Pereira binational agreement that calls for shared border protection and responsibilities.

Holguin said the Juan Manuel Santos administration is doing everything it can to safely return the hostages as soon as possible. She says the Colombian police, military, and intelligence agents are working around the clock in both countries to return the kidnapped. Espinosa said the same of Ecuador’s security forces.

Several Ecuadorian journalists gathered outside Colombia’s embassy in Quito today to hand a letter to authorities asking for their government to do whatever it can to return the media hostages who were on assignment in the Mataje area for the national Ecuadorean newspaper, El Comercio. The letter, which the journalist activists also gave to Ecuadorean authorities, is signed by some 386 media workers from throughout the country.  

"We’re here to demand that the Colombian Government does whatever it can to help free our colleagues,” said Carlos Rojas, a spokesperson for the reporters, in front of the embassy. Activists will return for a second night to Quito’s Plaza Grande to hold a candle vigil to demand the reporters’ safe return.

The media members were taken the same day a bomb went off along a Mataje highway in Ecuador, damaging a military vehicle. Just days prior, a bomb detonated along the same highway, killing three Ecuadorean soldiers and injuring several other military members.

Comment
0
Comments
Post with no comments.