Bogotá, November 9, 2026—Ecuadorian authorities must thoroughly investigate the killing of journalist Tomás Beltrán Conforme, determine if he was targeted for his work, and bring those responsible to justice, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Monday.
On Sunday, November 8, armed men shot and killed Beltrán, founder and editor of the Facebook-based local news site Calcetines, while he was parking his car in front of his home in the western town of Calceta, according to news reports and the Quito-based free press group Fundamedios.
“CPJ is alarmed by the killing of Ecuadorian journalist Tomás Beltrán Conforme following repeated threats to his life and urges the authorities to bring those responsible to justice,” said CPJ Latin America program coordinator, Cristina Zahar, in São Paulo. “Violence perpetrated by criminal groups has spread throughout the country, targeting not only journalists and whistleblowers, but also a presidential candidate, Fernando Villavicencio, in 2023.”
CPJ documented a spike of violence in Ecuador in 2023 and the exodus of numerous journalists in the following years.
Beltrán, who founded Calcetines in 2023, had received numerous threats for his reports on alleged corruption by local government officials, Fundamedios director César Ricaurte told CPJ.
Ricaurte said that two part-time workers for Beltrán’s website, a messenger, and a salesperson, were killed in a shootout in Calceta earlier this year and that the journalist received a series of threatening messages in April 2026 after he accused a local official of illicit enrichment. In a separate incident in 2023, Beltrán’s car was sprayed with a chemical agent.
Beltrán had been assigned a police escort for the past 18 months on recommendation of Ecuador’s protection mechanism for journalists, which is made up of government officials, civilians, and independent media workers, and is known as MAPP. Ricaurte told CPJ that due to the dangers he faced, MAPP had this year twice relocated Beltrán to Quito but that the journalist had recently returned to Calceta—without informing the mechanism—to visit his ailing mother.
There was no immediate response to CPJ’s emails to Ecuador’s Attorney General’s office seeking comment.