The Diplomat
Fernando Villavicencio Valencia, Ecuador’s presidential candidate, was assassinated by hired assassins as he left a rally in Quito. The crime has provoked widespread rejection in the South American country, which is experiencing hours of shock and has received solidarity from other nations.
The attack took place after 18:20 Ecuadorian time on Wednesday, 9 August 2023. The meeting in which he was participating was part of the campaign of the Construye movement, which Villavicencio was leading to win the elections, scheduled for August 20, 2023.
Villavicencio was a journalist and had a long career as a political activist, expert on oil issues, legislative advisor; he was recently elected to the National Assembly (Congress), where he served as president of the Oversight Commission. He was recently elected as a member of the National Assembly (Congress), where he served as president of the Oversight Commission. Now he is running for the Presidency of the Republic.
According to the newspaper El Comercio, associated with EditoRed, when Villavicencio got into a van after finishing a political rally at a school in the north-central area of the Ecuadorian capital, gunshots rang out. The bullets hit Villavicencio who, badly wounded, was taken to a nearby clinic, where he was confirmed dead.
The national government, headed by Guillermo Lasso, condemned the murder. It also reported that the attack was responded to by police present at the scene, as a result of which one of the attackers was killed. The Attorney General’s Office also reported that at least nine people were wounded in the shooting, among them a candidate for assemblywoman and two policemen.
In a message to the nation, President Lasso decreed three days of national mourning to honour Villavicencio’s memory. He also established a 60-day state of emergency throughout Ecuador.
The president of the National Electoral Council, Diana Atamaint, also participated in the message and reported the decision not to suspend the elections and that they will be held on 20 August, as planned.
Lasso considered Villavicencio’s death to be a “political crime, which takes on a terrorist character”. “We have no doubt”, he said, “that this murder is an attempt to sabotage the electoral process”.
Lasso expressed his gratitude for the messages of solidarity and repudiation of the attack that he has received from various countries and international institutions.
Solidarity with Ecuador: Neither violence nor impunity
should defeat democracy
The European Union-Latin America Media Editors Association, EditoRed, strongly condemns the assassination of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio Valencia on 9 August 2023.
We send our solidarity embrace to the family of the man who was also a critical journalist, as well as a prominent politician and activist. We join the grieving voice of his relatives to demand with them justice for this crime that shocks not only Ecuador but the world. We feel their pain as our own and we also make their struggle our own so that the circumstances of the vile attack are fully clarified and that the culprits, at all levels of responsibility, are held accountable before the law and its operators. The world, through the eyes of the free journalism that we defend, will be closely watching the outcome of the trial.
Our solidarity goes also to all the Ecuadorian people. We are sure that in this expression of support at such a difficult time we are conveying the general feeling of the citizens of the nations we serve through journalism.
Ecuador does not deserve to be held hostage to a wave of violence that has not been brought under control, that is getting worse and worse and that has not found in the country’s main political actors clear signs of a joint and agreed solution to put a stop to the organised crime that has sown terror in this beloved Latin American country.
Journalism has also suffered in this wave of violence. Recently, five journalists have had to leave Ecuador because of the risks to their lives. They did so, surely, remembering that earlier, in 2018, the worst threats were carried out against three members of a journalistic team of the newspaper El Comercio, murdered in Colombia, in the border area with Ecuador, by armed groups, in an unprecedented event and, until now, without full punishment or clarification. To the Ecuadorian journalists, especially to those who are being threatened, to those who have had to leave their country, may these words of encouragement and support come from their colleagues in the rest of Latin America and the European Union. You can count on us.
Through the media that make up this journalistic network, including The Diplomat in Spain, we ask societies, governments and institutions in the rest of America and Europe, especially, not to look the other way. The situation in Ecuador should affect us all, as well as the situation of other nations in both continents, which are immersed in wars of all kinds and with victims of all kinds. If we allow violence to go unpunished, we are condemned to live in a world without real democracy, perhaps one of apparent well-being, one in which citizenship cannot be exercised freely, a world without peace.
