Daniel Ortega’s regime made Nicaragua the only country in the world without print newspapers

“The Republic of Paper”, as the newspaper has historically been called Nicaraguan press, has run out of paper. Thursday evening, the gigantic Goss Urbanite press did not light up as usual, and this Friday the printed newspaper did not return to the streets.

The same luck ran the newspaper Today, people’s court and the same company. These are the last two forms that have circulated in the country. In this way, Nicaragua has become, for the moment, the only country in the world without a printed newspaper.

“Once again, the dictatorship of Ortega Murillo has retained our role. Until they release our supplies, we won’t be able to circulate in our print version, but they won’t silence us», Denounced the newspaper in its last cover of paper. In the same issue, the newspaper explains that the General Directorate of Customs (DGA) keeps the paper and other supplies it needs for its preparation without any explanation.

This is not the first time that Daniel Ortega’s regime has attempted such a strangulation. Between 2018 and 2019, this same newspaper suffered a 500-day blockage of all its supplies. About 100 tons of paper and ink which started to decompose over time in the cellar. The press shut down, the newspaper was visibly thinner until it hit a loose booklet, and many reporters, workers and spokespersons lost their jobs.

On February 6, 2020, thanks to a direction from Apostolic Nuncio Waldemar Stanislaw Sommertag with Vice-President Rosario Murillo, the newspaper was published and La Prensa returned to the streets with its regular editions. “La Prensa is going to be 100 years old,” recently deceased newspaper editor Jaime Chamorro Cardenal said.

La Prensa is Nicaragua’s oldest newspaper. On March 2, he turned 95 and carries a tradition of confrontation with the dictatorships that ruled Nicaragua, which has led him to endure censorship, manu militari closures, the prison of its directors and journalists, the assassination of its director, the bombing of its buildings, siege by the police and crowds of fanatics and, lately, blockade of its raw materials with the aim of strangling it.

It was so important in the history of Nicaragua that the poet Pablo Antonio Cuadra called it “The Republic of Paper” because, according to their criteria, in a country where the formal powers of the State do not work, The press was the legislative power because the people had its seat there, its voice, and it was the judicial power when it delivered justice, collected the complaints of the mistreated. “Even censored, La Prensa is the one that expresses in the conscience of the country, like a flag at half mast, what Nicaragua has lost and must recover,” Cuadra said when the newspaper turned 50.

“La Prensa has been a stone in the shoe of all the dictatorships we have had”, said Vilma Núñez, president of the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (CENIDH), an organization which denounced the blocking of the newspaper’s supply as “another violation of the regime’s human rights”.

“They (the regime) violate the right to freedom of expression and the right to be informed. It’s not a bureaucratic problem, it’s intentional ”, says the veteran human rights defender for whom this action is part of the repressive wave launched by the regime of Daniel Ortega. “Even the newspaper doesn’t want us to read anymore. This is part of the information blackout they want to provoke ”.

Two leaders of La Prensa – brothers Cristiana and Pedro Joaquín Chamorro Barrios – were arrested at different times., shortly after expressing his intention to compete against Daniel Ortega for the presidency of the country in the elections next November, on charges of “money laundering” and “treason”.

La Prensa General Manager Juan Lorenzo Holmann Chamorro says that Until 2018, La Prensa’s contributions reached the newspaper without setback, In terms of deadlines of less than 10 days that the law gives to the General Directorate of Customs (DGA) to approve the corresponding exemptions. Article 68 of the Nicaraguan Political Constitution establishes that “the importation of paper, machinery and equipment and parts for the mass media” is exempt from “all kinds” of taxes.

In 2018, when massive protests against Daniel Ortega’s regime took place in Nicaragua, the obstacles started without any explanation. So they held onto a shipment of paper for 500 days, and the newspaper survived by purchasing more expensive and unsuitable paper for newspapers in the local market.

This time, there are 23 tons of paper held back and they fear that another 84 tons of raw material that are on the way will suffer the same fate. The customs deadline has already been passed without any response from the authorities, despite repeated efforts by Holmann Chamorro to the director of customs, Eddy Medrano, to release the supplies imported by La Prensa.

“It’s not a closure,” notes Holmann, however. “It’s a stalemate that we think somehow in the print part will be resolved and if not resolved we will continue to do our work through digital platforms ”.

He recalled the history of the abuses that La Prensa suffered. “Despite everything, we are better than in the 80s when a soldier arrived and said: It’s closed. Now we have a robust digital platform, and we will strengthen it even further to continue to report ”.

He says that They will continue to insist until the General Directorate of Customs (DGA) authorizes the exemption of the retained raw material and La Prensa comes back down to the street. as it has done for over 95 years. “Stopping printing does not mean that we are going to stop insisting that our newspaper be published, because it is a right.”

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