Guatemalan anthropologist and journalist Irma Alicia Velásquez joined the list of activists, opponents and journalists who have been denied entry to Nicaragua, as reported in an extensive column published in the middle The newspaper a week after the incident.
Velásquez reported in the opinion column entitled “Stepping on the doors of the Ortega Murillo dictatorship” who was held for hours at the Augusto C. Sandino international airport, in Managua, on Sunday, July 24.
In the text, he indicated that since May he bought a ticket and fulfilled all the immigration requirements without receiving any notification from the government of President Daniel Ortega about a possible prohibition or restriction to enter Managua.
“So I left confidently on July 24, however, upon arrival at the airport, the same airline I traveled on asked me to identify myself and upon doing so they immediately handed me over to a government agent dressed in civilian clothes,” he said.
The anthropologist and journalist said that the agent asked her for her identification documents and without any reason or justification withheld them. She then she was transferred to another place.
“I knew that my integrity and my life were in danger. If my income was not registered through the migration system, who could attest that I was retained? The government of that country could argue that I never entered and simply disappear and I could end up in one of the prisons where valuable lives are being extinguished, “said the journalist.
Although he asked questions of the authorities present, he did not get answers: “The only thing the agent told me was that I should never have traveled to this country,” he recalled.
“Why did they wait until I got to the airport to stop me in front of the other passengers? Part of the answer is that, on the one hand, they wanted to publicly humiliate me as if I were a criminal who could be arrested for my work related to human rights and the rights of women and indigenous peoples that I have maintained inside and outside of my country,” he said.
An increasingly common practice
According to journalists’ organizations, in recent months the Ortega government has reinforced this practice in Nicaragua, including its own citizens, as was the case of Tifani Roberts, of the network Univision.
Roberts intended to visit his family in Managua on June 11, however the Avianca airline notified him that the Nicaraguan government authorities did not authorize his entry into the country.
“Why do the Nicaraguan authorities use the airline as migration agents? They do not have the courage to leave evidence of what they do because they know that it is a flagrant violation of human rights, ”the reporter questioned on her Twitter account.
A group of Cuban journalists were also denied entry to Managua in early January, when they were trying to cover the Central American country.
“They begin to tell me that Nicaragua is sovereign and that it does not have to give me explanations, but when we started recording they became like beasts. I felt as if I were at the José Martí International Airport in Cuba”, she expressed to the voice of america at the time the journalist Camilo Loret, who was one of those affected.
The special rapporteur for freedom of expression of the IACHR, Pedro Vaca, recently stated that independent journalism has been persecuted in Nicaragua through stigmatizing speeches, but also through the use of force.
“When we speak of ‘communicational terrorists’, of ‘pandemic terrorists’, of labels such as ‘disseminators of malice and falsehoods’, ‘false tongues’, ‘infamous liars and slanderers’, ‘evil beings who obey foreign interests,’ because this is the way in which the highest Nicaraguan authorities refer to the work of journalists,” Vaca said.
The government of President Ortega has insisted that independent journalists lie, when referring to the political crisis that the country has been experiencing since 2018.
Connect with the Voice of America! Subscribe to our channel Youtube and turn on notifications, or follow us on social media: Facebook, Twitter and Instagram
