Aníbal Toruño, director of Radio Darío, burned on April 21, 2018 by Ortega mobs and closed by the Ortega-Murillo regime on August 12, affirms that his media outlet will continue to function, now from the internet, through his website and social networks, to continue “defeating the censorship” imposed by Ortega in Nicaragua.
“Radio Darío continues, it reinvents itself, this is an opportunity for us to finally be a digital medium. We are going to continue working, breaking the censorship, in any way that technology allows us, in this case the web, the social networks, which are basically the channels where we are going to continue making radio,” Toruño said in an interview with the program Tonight Y CONFIDENTIAL.
Radio Darío worked in León through the modulated frequency 89.3 until, by order of the Ortega-Murillo regime, the Institute of Telecommunications and Mail (Telcor) forced it to turn off its transmitters.
Telcor, through a letter sent on August 12, ordered Radio Darío to “immediately cease its transmissions, all under penalty of law.”
The entity argued that the radio allegedly modified and substantially altered “the authorized facilities and the conditions in which the FM sound broadcasting service must operate, without the prior authorization of Telcor, which constitutes a cause for cancellation of the license.”
In addition, it indicated that technical personnel from that institute carried out a review and verified that Radio Darío was operating in another residence to which it was authorized; that the main transmitter is located on El Fortín hill and has other characteristics than the approved license; that it transmitted with a power of 100 watts, which does not correspond to the approved power of 500 watts; and that they were using the 293.5 frequency without permission.
The director of Radio Darío and his staff, since the media outlet was burned in April 2018, have been persecuted, threatened and harassed by the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), in July 2018, granted precautionary measures in favor of Aníbal Toruño and thirteen of the journalists and collaborators of Radio Darío. However, these measures “have never been honored and will never comply with them,” said the director of that radio station.
Radio Darío’s broadcast, which bothered the Ortega regime to the point of shutting it down, included two newscasts, opinion programs and rural topics, a podcast and musical segments.
Regime always wanted to take Radio Darío off the air
Toruño denounced that the Ortega-Murillo regime, especially after ordering the radio facilities to be burned and seeing that they continued to work, persecuted and harassed and, in his case, even from exile, “always” had the intention of “ take Radio Darío off the air and this was the best opportunity, in the midst of a crisis that is deepening more and more in terms of freedom of expression, control of the country, including the Church.”
“The regime wants to crush, eliminate, do as in Cuba, where only the official media or media that accommodate the official line remain. He has decided to sweep the media as he has swept the NGOs”, he denounced.
He stressed that both he and the radio staff are in “mourning”, because “a large part of us has been ripped away. Radio Darío was 73 years old, since my father founded it, to be on the air”.
A “frontal” attack against Toruño and his family
Three days after the closure of Radio Darío, Telcor also canceled broadcast licenses Radio La Guarachera, in Chinandega, and Radio Sky, in León, both owned by relatives from Toruño.
Telcor’s argument in both cases was the same as that used with Radio Darío, arguing that these radio stations were located in a different location than the one they had when they were authorized. Toruño denounced that the closure of both radio stations was of a “political” nature.
“The attack against me and against my family is frontal. The closure of these other two radio stations has to do with an economic attack on everything that means resources, income, generation, in some way that our lives can be justified because there is no doubt that we had personnel working and fighting in our beloved Nicaragua”, he pointed.
“Radio La Guarachera was a music radio, just like Radio Sky, from my nephew, they were totally music, for which there was no reason to be affected. So, we come to the conclusion that the attack by Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo in these cases is economic. they want to delete any possibility, in addition to Radio Darío that has to do with freedom of expression, of any income that could make us self-sustaining within Nicaragua,” he added.
The director of Radio Darío stressed that the Ortega-Murillo regime “has done a lot of damage to the media and will have to answer for the damages, for everything that has been caused to media such as CONFIDENCIAL, La Prensa, 100% Noticias or Radio Darío. Goes to have to answer before an international tribunal if necessary”.
The Ortega regime has shut down 16 local media outlets so far this month. Between August 1 and 2, Telcor ordered the closure of ten stations in the Diocese of Matagalpa, directed by Monsignor Álvarez. He also ordered to cancel the transmission licenses of Radio Vos de Matagalpa and two subscription television channels: RB3 “El Canal de la Zona Láctea”, also from Matagalpa, and the NGTV3 channel, which was broadcast in Nueva Guinea, in the South Caribbean.
On August 15, while the two stations belonging to the Toruño family were closing down, Telcor also canceled the transmission license of Radio San Carlos, in Río San Juan, after inspecting its facilities and equipment.
