The Ortega hunt against local and independent media outlets claimed a new victim: the NGTV3 channel, which broadcast in Nueva Guinea, in the Nicaraguan South Caribbean. With a message on his social networks, the journalist Galo José Suárez Jaime, owner of the channel, announced the closure of the medium at the hands of the Nicaraguan Institute of Telecommunications and Post Office (Telcor). “I couldn’t say goodbye to you through the television screens because when they told me I was already off the air,” he lamented.
This small outlet became the second local channel that the regime shut down in the last week, after on Tuesday, August 2, it took local channel RB3 “El Canal de la Zona Láctea” off the air, whose programming was broadcast on television. by subscription in Matagalpa.
Also, last week, the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo canceledthrough Telcor, to eleven local stations, ten belonging to the Diocese of Matagalpa —directed by Bishop Rolando José Álvarez, who is “kidnapped in the Matagalpa Episcopal Curia— and the independent Radio Vos.
The Nicaraguan authorities have also removed from programming three catholic channels that were broadcast on subscription television in the last three months.
“On Friday, August 5, at around ten in the morning, I was visited by the manager of Telecable Nueva Guinea to inform me, verbally, that the company had received a circular with an order from Telcor, to take the the channel 3 signal of the Telecable Nueva Guinea network,” the journalist reported.
“I have decided to make this situation public since I requested that they let me know that provision, through a letter which they have already confirmed to me that they are not going to do it,” Suárez commented.
Will continue on digital platform
The closure of Catholic radio stations and other community media in Nicaragua has been condemned by the European Union (EU) and international organizations such as the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA), the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and the Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression (RELE).
The IAPA denounced that the closure of the local media it is “part of a campaign that aims to eliminate all vestiges of an independent press.”
Suárez announced that “we are going to continue on our digital platform, sharing with you information of social interest.”
“Through this medium I want to thank the entire population of Nueva Guinea, all entities, all natural and legal persons, all our advertisers, all our sponsors, for allowing us to keep them company for exactly 12 years,” he said. journalist.
