Censorship in Nicaragua: forces of Daniel Ortega’s regime arrested the editor of La Prensa newspaper

Nicaraguan police transferred newspaper’s director general to the Directorate of Legal Aid Press, Juan Lorenzo Holmann, after the recording on Friday of the headquarters of the independent newspaper and the start of an investigation against the media for allegations “fraud and money laundering offenses”.

According to the media themselves, the authorities entered its facilities at 12:20 p.m. (local time) and they kept journalists and collaborators detained and held incommunicado, and cut off access to the Internet and servers.

An hour later, the regime police issued a statement in which they said they had opened an investigation against the company and its leaders.for the offenses of customs fraud and money laundering to the detriment of the State of Nicaragua and Nicaraguan society”.

The manager was transferred to the DAJ headquarters at around 05:00 local time, with no more news from him for the moment, reports the media itself.

The media headquarters are still taken by the police. At this time, inside the parking lot of the newspaper’s premises, there are uniformed police officers and three motorized agents.

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.

International condemnation

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”.

Through his Twitter account, he recalled that “direct or indirect pressures aimed at silencing the work of the press affect democratic debate and are incompatible with the right to freedom of expression”.

The US Department of State’s Western Hemisphere Affairs Office called on Ortega “to respect ‘La Prensa’ freedom of speech 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.

For its part, the international secretariat of Amnesty International in America demanded “respect for the rights of the workers of ‘La Prensa'”. “We condemn this new attempt by the Nicaraguan government to stifle press freedom in the country,” he said on his Twitter account.

The President of Nicaragua, Daniel ortega, seeks re-election in the upcoming elections on November 7, as part of a wave of repression against opposition groups, which has left more than 30 independent politicians and journalists detained in recent months.

The international community denounced the situation in the country and, along with Spain, called on its ambassadors in Managua, Argentina, Costa Rica, Mexico and Colombia, for the lack of guarantees in this electoral process.

(With information from Europa Press)

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