Nicaragua informed UNESCO of its desire to leave the organization, after it awarded its world prize for press freedom to the historic daily of the country The presswhose editorial staff was forced to exile, UNESCO announced on Sunday. This decision “will deprive the population of Nicaragua of the profits of cooperation in particular on education and culture,” regretted the director general of UNESCO, Audrey Azoulay, after receiving an official maanagua letter.
“UNESCO is also fully in its role when it defends freedom of expression and freedom of the press all over the world,” she adds. The press release specifies that “since 2021, following the imprisonment and expulsion of the country of its leaders as well as the confiscation of its goods”, the newspaper continued its online work, with a team operating mainly since Costa Rica, Spain, Mexico, Germany and the United States.
A newspaper that denounces the president’s stranglehold since 2007
Dean of the Nicaraguan newspapers, founded in 1926, The press had played an important role in the fight against the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza. He also more recently denounced the control over the power of President Daniel Ortega, who has run this country in Central America since 2007, and his wife Rosario Murillo, vice-president since 2017 and become “co-president” in February.
In a letter sent to Audrey Azoulay and UNESCO, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Nicaragua, believes that daily life “represents a vile betrayal against our homeland after having historically promoted and supported violence, interference, hate crimes, cruelty, counter-culture”. Valdrack Jasentschke also accuses him of having defended “the military and political interventions of the United States in Nicaragua”, deeming “deeply shameful that UNESCO appears as the promoter, and obviously as an accomplice, of an action which offends and attacks the deepest values of national identity”.
“In Nicaragua, the dictatorship criminalizes independent journalism”
The manager of The pressJuan Lorenzo Holmann, was arrested in 2021, sentenced to nine years in prison for money laundering, before being released and expelled to the United States, with 221 other dissidents, in February 2023. The newspaper’s headquarters in Managua was transformed into “cultural center” by the authorities.
“It is a great honor for The press to receive this award […] And we receive it with deep gratitude, ”reacted Juan Lorenzo Holmann on Friday. “In Nicaragua, there is no independent journalism, the dictatorship criminalizes him. The exercise of journalism is not a vocation, it is not a profession, it has become a priesthood, “he added. Nicaragua is ranked 172e (out of 180) in the classification on the freedom of the press published Friday by Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF), which believes that “the independent press continues to live a real nightmare” in this country.
The UNESCO / Guillermo Cano World Freedom Prize – named after a Colombian journalist murdered in 1986 – will be officially handed over during a ceremony on May 7 in Brussels. Each year he rewards “a person, an organization or an institution having made an exceptional contribution to the defense or the promotion of press freedom, wherever in the world, in particular when this contribution was obtained in defiance of danger with Bravoure”, explains UNESCO.
