Wilson Cabrera, a Radio Station Voz de la Esmeralda Oriental journalist, was prevented from leaving the country to attend a IACHR hearing on freedom of Expression in Ecuador.
(Fundamedios/IFEX) – 23 October 2011 – Wilson Cabrera, a journalist with the recently-shut down Radio Station Voz de la Esmeralda Oriental, of the city of Macas, in the Ecuadorian Amazon, was prevented from leaving the country. He was part of a delegation of victims and civil society representatives who requested, and were granted, a Thematic Hearing about Freedom of Expression in Ecuador during the 143rd Period of Sessions of the Inter American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).
Cabrera said that on the morning when he was supposed to board a flight that would take him to Washington, an airport agent informed him that an order had been issued against him forbidding him to leave the country since 2007.
The journalist was able to find out that the order had been issued by the Guayas Provincial Command, which surprised him because, he stated, he has never even been in that region of the country.
