The Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) execrated this Thursday the consummation of the “theft and dismantling” of the facilities of the newspaper La Prensa by the Government of Nicaragua, which “corroborates the evident official persecution against independent journalism in that country.”
On August 23, the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo gave the order to dismantle La Prensa, in Managua, whose facilities were raided in August 2021 and occupied by the Police since then, the IAPA denounced in a statement.
In the newspaper building, the regime opened a cultural training center.
It is estimated at more than ten million dollars worth of property seizedincluding real estate, a newspaper printing press and a commercial printer.
The Ortega regime has also confiscated other media, among them CONFIDENTIAL and 100% Noticias, whose headquarters were converted into a maternity home and a care center for addicts, respectively.
The IAPA expressed its solidarity with the directors and staff of La Prensa, who on Wednesday responded to the regime with an announcement on their website: “No dictatorship has shown such viciousness against the values that La Prensa represents, such as that of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo.”
The statement emphasizes that “La Prensa has faced three dictatorships, suffered closures, imprisonment of managers and journalists and the murder of its director, Pedro Joaquín Chamorro Cardenal, on January 10, 1978.”
It has also endured, he added, the “bombing and burning of its facilities, the siege of fanatical mobs, censorship and the customs blockade of supplies” that made its printing possible.
“Great gall of the regime”
Jorge Canahuati, president of the IAPA, rejected the “great impudence with which the (Nicaraguan) regime legalizes and consumes the usurpation of all the assets and the building of La Prensa.”
Canahuati, CEO of Grupo Opsa, from Honduras, stressed that “we are facing the regime that has become the greatest repressor in the Americas.”
Last month, journalists, editors, photographers and newspaper staff had to leave the country “to protect their security and freedom,” according to La Prensa, which continues to function digitally from exile.
The Government of Nicaragua also arrested the general manager of the newspaper, Juan Lorenzo Holmann Chamorroregional vice president of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, and executive members of La Prensa Cristiana Chamorro and Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, sentenced to long prison terms without due process of law.
The president of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Carlos Jornet, warned that “the regime manipulates and uses all the resources at its disposal to eliminate uncomfortable media such as La Prensa, violating the Constitution that prohibits these acts.”
Similar to Venezuela
Jornet, journalistic director of La Voz del Interior, from Argentina, called on the media, press associations and international organizations to raise their voices “in the face of this very serious violation of press freedom in Nicaragua.”
Canahuati and Jornet also warned about the “robbery” of the facilities of the newspaper El Nacional, from Venezuela, by the government of Nicolás Maduro.
“After a rigged resolution of the Justice in favor of Diosdado Cabello, the (Venezuelan) government confiscated the newspaper’s building,” said the IAPA, based in Miami (Florida).
The IAPA reiterated the validity of the Declaration on Nicaragua signed by 27 national and international press organizations that denounces the dictatorship, condemns the forced exile of more than 120 journalists and calls for the return of the facilities to La Prensa, CONFIDENTIAL and 100% News.
It also demands the immediate release of journalists Miguel Mora, Miguel Mendoza and Jaime Arellano, as well as members of the board of La Prensa.
