“See you soon my Nicaragua! See you soon, EFE family in Managua. God first, I will return. I carry you in my heart,” was the emotional message with which the Nicaraguan journalist Luis Felipe Palacios announced his exile on Facebook, after sharing a message newspaper article where it is reported that the government of Daniel Ortega denied him entry to his own country.
Palacios, originally from Nicaragua, has been a correspondent for the EFE agency in Managua for more than 16 years, and had been on a business trip to Panama for less than a month.
When trying to return on a flight from Miami to Managua, he was notified via email that his entry into the Central American country “had not been authorized.”
The Spanish news agency confirmed the refusal of the Ortega government on Twitter and the EFE Comunicación account issued a brief message in which they expressed that they were confident that the situation “will have a prompt solution” and the reporter “can resume his usual work in the country “.
Solidarity messages multiplied on social networks. The journalist Raquel Godos, from the EFE agency, said that her colleague “joins the more than 120 journalists exiled from Nicaragua since 2018.”
“Nicaragua is close to being a blind spot,” wrote Goths on Twitter.
In the same way, the director of the digital media 100% Noticias, Lucía Pineda Ubau, expressed “a hug to a great journalism professional”, in reference to Palacios.
More attacks against the international press
The case of Palacios has not been the only one this year. In mid-June, the Nicaraguan authorities prohibited journalist Tiffani Roberts, a correspondent for the US network Univisión, from entering the country.
Roberts, who also has US nationality, intended to visit his family in the city of Granada, after almost a year of absence, but he was also prohibited from reaching Managua.
Vilma Núñez, director of the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights told the voice of america that the Ortega administration is converting these practices “into increasingly frequent routines.”
“This not only affects human rights, but also creates a feeling of insecurity and terror, in addition to violating national laws that guarantee the right to mobility and free movement and in the case of this journalist the right to freedom of information,” Nunez noted.
Nicaragua has been experiencing a sociopolitical crisis since 2018 after protests against President Daniel Ortega, which left more than 300 dead, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
See also the VOA special: information blackout
Ortega has branded the demonstrations at that time as an attempted coup and has disintegrated civil society organizations, while beginning a “repressive” escalation against the media and journalists who report independently, according to organizations critical of the president. .
Since then more than 120 Nicaraguan journalists have gone into exile And Ortega has ordered the closure of several communication companies such as the 100% Noticias channel, the Confidencial weekly, the Trinchera de la Noticia outlet, as well as the newspaper La Prensa, which is almost a century old.
The president, who has been in power for more than 15 consecutive years, has accused the national and international press of lying about the political crisis in the country and the human rights violations questioned by experts.
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