The Nicaraguan cartoonist known on social networks as “PAM-Nicaragua” due to his drawings alluding to the 2018 civic rebellion made the decision to go into exile, after threats by the Police at the service of the Daniel Ortega regime.
The young opponent, 35 years old, and originally from Managua, made the decision to leave Nicaragua for Costa Rica on Thursday, October 13, and later traveled to Germany, according to what he said in an interview with Article 66.
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The entrepreneur’s departure occurred after approximately 20 police officers raided his house a month ago and seized, without a court order, several of his drawings and work equipment.
(…) «Practically forced to leave the country for my safety and that of my wife, due to direct threats from the Sandinista Police to take away all the things of our business -sublimation and printing workshop-. They arrived, they scrambled and salvaged the whole house looking for evidence or evidence of I don’t know what », denounced the cartoonist from his Facebook page.
Among the reasons that forced him to make the decision to go into exile was the statement made by the uniformed men that “I wasn’t getting into trouble, we already know who you are, we’re taking your drawings here. The next time we come we are going to take all the equipment you have and it is worth it if we leave you without a job and then we will come for you, because we are at peace here».
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He also reported that the officers began to ask him about some stickers and some designs. I told them that I had no idea what they were talking about, but I had all the drawings stuck to the wall, so they began to recognize them and say: “do you remember this one and that one?”, because there was a design of the tribute to the young man who hit an officer with a chair —in a protest in 2019— in Metrocentro or the boys who brought water in Granada. In the end they all recognized », he denounced.
PAM stated that “I did not intend to give them the satisfaction —the Ortega regime— of leaving me with nothing, I packed my notebooks and colors, sold the machines, and we left. Hoping everything is for the best.”
Now in exile, the entrepreneur assured that he will continue to make drawings critical of the Nicaraguan dictatorship. «If I did it being in my country, now more being abroad. Let them hold on », he sentenced with aplomb.