The Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) demanded on Wednesday “the immediate release” of three directors of the newspaper La Prensa and two journalists convicted for their defense of freedom of expression and of the press in Nicaragua.
The organization considers Juan Lorenzo Holmann Chamorro, Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, Cristiana Chamorro, Miguel Mora and Miguel Mendoza to be “prisoners of conscience”. All imprisoned by the government of Daniel Ortega and for whom he asks for “immediate release.”
Both Mora and Mendoza, were sentenced last February to 13 and 9 years in prison, respectively, for alleged conspiracy against national integrity.
Mora was director of the 100% Noticias channel and a candidate for the presidential elections of November 2021. While Mendoza is an independent sports journalist and was also sentenced for the crime of spreading false news.
“We demand due process from the government of Daniel Ortega,” said the president of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Carlos Jornet, and the organization’s president, Jorge Canahuati, in a Press release in which they remembered that March 1 is the National Day of the Journalist in Nicaragua.
Both also expressed their solidarity with Nicaraguan journalists who “struggle to exercise their profession in freedom, without pressure, without repression, without reprisals” whom they consider “prisoners of conscience.”
According to the IAPA, since the beginning of the 2018 social protests against the Ortega government, some 120 journalists have left the country.
The group for Human Rights Nicaragua Never Again affirms that the destination countries of the communicators are mainly Costa Rica, the United States and Spain.
For two consecutive years, Nicaragua, along with Venezuela and Cuba, has been among the countries without press freedom in the Chapultepec Index, a tool used by the IAPA to evaluate freedom of expression and the press.
The Nicaraguan president has said in the past that the detainees are “enemies of the revolution” and his government calls independent journalists “communication terrorists” because they consider that they spread information with political interests.
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