Death on the border: Tracing their last journey
After the murder of Javier Ortega, Paúl Rivas and Efraín Segarra, an international team of 20 reporters, photojournalists, and videographers worked for four months to investigate the abduction and murder of their Ecuadorian colleagues, as well as to continue their reporting with the support of Forbidden Stories, an organisation devoted to continuing the work of threatened, jailed or murdered journalists.
During the latter stages of the “Death on the border” investigation, IMS supported the FLIP’s involvement to provide safety advice to the wider team of journalists from Ecuador and Colombia. Then overlapping with this work, in June and July the IMS Global Safety Programme teamed up with the FLIP – along with a select number of media support organisations and journalists from Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela – and used best practices from the Afghan-Pakistan border to develop a set of safety guidelines for border coverage in the Andean region.
These guidelines will be available online in the coming weeks and have been used to produce a series four cross-border investigations into issues ranging from indigenous peoples’ rights to migration and organised crime.
Periodistas Sin Cadenas, La Liga contra el Silencio and OCCRP – Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and FLIP – The Foundation for Press Freedom – are among those who have taken part in bringing the story about their last reporting trip, their kidnapping and execution to light.
Go to the OCCRP website for the full version of Death on the Border
