IAPA condemns arrest of director of La Prensa newspaper in Nicaragua

The Inter-American Press Association (SIP) sentenced on Saturday the detention and incommunicado detention of the director general of the newspaper La Prensa, Juan Lorenzo Holmann, after the raid in the offices of the newspaper.

The organization, based in Miami and dedicated to the defense and promotion of freedom of the press and expression in the Americas, He blamed Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo’s “dictatorial regime” for the episode, which took a step forward on opposition and media rights in the country.

However, the Nicaraguan police assure that Holmann under investigation for alleged crimes of “customs fraud and money laundering”.

According to the IAPA, Holmann became, with his arrest, the political prisoner number 33 of the regime which has intensified the repression since last May against opponents, presidential candidates, the media and independent journalists.

In addition to being the manager of the newspaper La Prensa, Holmann is the Regional Vice President for Nicaragua of the IAPA Committee on Press and Information Freedom.

Holmann’s arrest came after Press will cease publishing its print edition this Friday due to obstacles imposed by the government to free the newspaper from national customs.

Friday, the police had entered the newspaper’s offices without a court ruling, hijacking accounting information, computers and financial sector servers.

Just last thursday Press He had denounced that their paper copies would cease to circulate because the General Directorate of Nicaraguan Customs keeps in detention the raw material belonging to the newspaper.

Currently, the facilities of the only remaining printed newspaper in the country are still in the hands of the police.

Holmann, for his part, He was transferred to Legal Aid prisons, where he is still being held and held incommunicado.

The President of IAPA, Jorge Canahuati, personally condemned the search and detention of Holmann.

“Yes we ran out of words to denounce the Ortega dictatorship, it shows every day how he is sidelining opponents and critics to make his way to the November elections, ”he said.

For his part, the chairman of the Press Freedom Committee, Carlos Jornet, condemned “that they continue to invent crimes against Press with the intention of governing with impunity ”.

“We insist to organizations and the international community on the need to speak out vigorously against the outrages against this newspaper, its directors and its journalists “, said Canahuati, president of the OPSA group, of Honduras, and Jornet, director of the newspaper The voice from within, from Argentina.

With its facilities taken and paperless, Press continues to report on its live site, laprensa.com.ni. Since 2018, two other independent media, 100% News Yes ConfidentialThey were also illegally intervening and their facilities attributed to the State.

Holmann is the second regional vice-president of the IAPA Commission arrested in recent weeks. On July 11, he was arrested in Cuba Henri Constantin Ferreiro, released 15 days later. Constantin was Regional Vice President of IAPA for five years.

Several countries and international organizations have indicated that they are monitoring the search for Press and they condemned this act of the Nicaraguan authorities. In the first place, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) condemned “the constant official persecution of the press in Nicaragua”.

The Office of Western Hemisphere Affairs of the United States Department of State also called on Ortega “to respect the freedom of expression of” La Prensa “ instead of acting to silence independent reports, ”as posted on Twitter.

Likewise, international organizations such as Human Rights Watch (HRW) or Amnesty International launched a similar message. The director of the Americas division of the NGO HRW, José Miguel Vivanco, estimated on his Twitter that “Ortega has already destroyed any possibility of fair elections”. “If the international community does not react, Ortega will turn Nicaragua into a black hole,” he warned.

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