Between Monday, August 22, and Tuesday, August 23, the Sandinista government of Daniel Ortega inaugurated two new official entities in the buildings expropriated from the Organization of American States in Managua; and another in the newspaper La Prensa, dean of Nicaraguan journalism, whose headquarters were raided in 2021.
The Attorney General of the Republic, Wendy Morales, ceded on Monday in a private act the building rented by the OAS and granted it to the National University of Nicaragua (UNAN-Managua) for the creation of the Miguel D’Escoto Study Center, the which was called “House of Sovereignty”.
“This place was a place where the colony ministry worked, which was at the service of Yankee imperialism, the North American empire… but today the UNAN-Managua takes possession of Casa Soberania to continue strengthening the values of principle and sovereignty,” he assured in the official media the president of the National Council of Universities, Ramona Rodríguez.
A day later, the José Coronel Urtecho Polytechnic Cultural Center was inaugurated in the facilities of the newspaper La Prensa, where students will supposedly be attended with courses and workshops.
The oldest newspaper in Nicaragua was expropriated “illegally and in violation of the Nicaraguan constitution” say analysts, a year after being raided by the Police who accused Juan Lorenzo Holmann of the alleged crime of money laundering, denounced the most important in the country.
The vice president of Nicaragua and spokeswoman Rosario Murillo celebrated the expropriation on Tuesday at noon in her daily speech in the official media.
“That center that marks the final days of hate, of hate in our country, are the final days of hate… and those places that have been dens for plotting crimes against humanity today are centers for deep spirituality,” Murillo said in reference to the press.
The La Prensa building, valued at around 10 million dollars, according to a newspaper article, is the third media outlet confiscated by the Sandinista administration of Daniel Ortega in the last four years.
Ortega previously assaulted the 100% News and Confidential Channel.
According to the Nicaraguan Constitution, confiscation is prohibited, and that the State can only seize private property when the law allows it, although with prior and fair compensation for those affected, something that did not happen in the case of the means seized by Ortega. .
rejection by action
Ortega’s recent actions were rejected by various analysts and opponents, as well as by human rights activists.
“We strongly condemn the usurpation of the facilities of the newspaper La Prensa by the Ortega-Murillo regime, which woke up without the sign that it maintained for more than 90 years outside the building,” said the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights, Cenidh.
Meanwhile, the poet Gioconda Belli said that “it hits her that they remove the label of La Prensa which symbolized more than a newspaper.” “He was unyielding during Somoza, during the 1980s and always. This dispossession is disrespectful to Nicaragua’s historical memory of dignity and freedom,” Belli wrote on Twitter.
According to analysts consulted by the VOAOrtega’s decision to take over the media is illegal.
In the case of the OAS, the experts point out that in addition “it is an absolute violation of international law since that building does not belong and did not belong to the Nicaraguan government.”
His capture “is a flagrant violation of international law,” he told the VOARicardo Lizano, former Costa Rican ambassador to the OAS.
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