The regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, through the National Technological Institute (Inatec), consummated this Wednesday, April 19, the expropriation of the facilities of the newspaper La Prensa, a property valued between 18 and 20 million dollars.
In the stolen building, located at kilometer 4.5 on the northern highway of Managua, the Ortega administration inaugurated the “José Coronel Urtecho Cultural and Polytechnic Center.”
The inauguration of this new Inatec center took place on Wednesday afternoon, the day that Nicaraguans commemorate the fifth anniversary of the April 2018 Rebellion and that Ortega declared “National Day of Peace.”
Related news: Murillo announces that the inauguration of the technical center in facilities stolen from La Prensa will be on April 19
“We are celebrating peace on this April 19, handing over to our people the facilities of the new Cultural and Polytechnic Center “The Past Will Not Return”, and we toured the 100% equipped environments with more than 49 didactic environments”, said Loyda Barreda, executive director of Inatec.
In the opening ceremony, the Ortega official also took the opportunity to rant against the staff of the newspaper La Prensa. “We will all remember that hate crimes were brewing here, anxiety was brewing here for our people and today it has become an environment for education, technical training, for work, for life, for the prosperity of Nicaraguan families,” asserted.
For its part, the oldest newspaper in Nicaragua, on your websitestressed that despite the confiscation of the property and “with a newsroom in exile due to harassment and threats of imprisonment, La Prensa has not stopped its work of reporting.”
“This is not the first time that they have closed us down or that they have tried to silence us and they have not really silenced us, neither before nor now,” said Juan Lorenzo Holmann, general manager of La Prensa.
“They persecuted us, harassed us, confiscated us, robbed us, kidnapped us, exiled us, they have tried to steal our citizenship, our Nicaraguan identity; but no dictator has ever brought us to our knees, who says this one will make it? Paraphrasing them, “they have not been able, nor will they be able to” kidnap, confiscate, subdue our ideas, nor prevent La Prensa from continuing to report, from continuing to be a platform and a space for society to express itself and give a voice to those who have no voice,” he said. Holmann Chamorro, who spent 545 days captive in the Chipote cells.
“All this perverse effort that they are making against La Prensa and La Prensa continues to be informed, continues there with that resilience, even with all our newsroom in exile, it must be frustrating for them not to be able to silence us,” he added.
Likewise, the manager of La Prensa, paraphrasing the dictatorship again, ruled that “when Nicaragua becomes a Republic again, the past will definitely not return.”
millionaire investment
Rosario Murillo was “particularly insistent with the inauguration of this center in the facilities that she stole from the newspaper where she herself worked for almost a decade, between 1968 and 1977, and has described it as a” machination den for crimes against humanity. , noted the media.
Prior to the inauguration, the regime ordered a series of purchases to equip and condition the stolen property. According to Inatec Resolution No. 13-2023, published in La Gaceta No. 54 on Thursday, March 23, 2023, a tender amounting to 3 million 816 thousand 893.55 córdobas was awarded to the company “Redes y Circuitos”, the only bidder who appeared.
The contract is for the “Acquisition of equipment, supplies and materials for the Art and Culture Specialty at the José Coronel Urtecho Cultural and Polytechnic Center”. The award was made under a “selective modality” and on an “urgency” basis.
On February 13, 3.25 million córdobas were also allocated “urgently” to provide maintenance to the machines of the printing press occupied in August 2021 to the newspaper La Prensa.
Through the administrative resolution published in The Gazette On Monday, February 13, the dictatorship expresses that the printing equipment will be used to reproduce the material that the center requires for its work.
