ECUADOR: ‘Criminalisation Serves as a Deterrent, Seeking to Discipline Others’

by CIVICUSMonday, August 24, 2026Inter Press Service CIVICUS discusses the rapid erosion of civic space in Ecuador with Gabriela Panchana, an activist, communicator and founder of the En Voz Alta and Rumbo Plural digital platforms. Gabriela PanchanaGabriela faces legal proceedings as a result of her online activism. Her experience is part of a growing pattern where activists and journalists face criminalisation and harassment against a backdrop of widespread impunity. In June, anti-corruption activist Monika Silva Koniuszek, who’d investigated the president’s family businesses, was murdered.How did the legal proceedings against you start, and what stage are they at?The current proceedings began with a thread I posted on Twitter/X on 9 June, in which I asked the US Embassy in Quito to help shed light on the murder of Monika Silva Koniuszek, a Polish human rights defender based in Ecuador who had handed over documentation on alleged drug-trafficking networks to the embassy and the US Drug Enforcement Administration. Someone accused me of speaking ‘solely out of financial self-interest’. I replied, and as a result I was charged with a fourth-class offence, which is the least serious c...