Ortega’s Police Besiege Local Radio Stations
The violation occured on the day before Saturday’s attempted demonstration called by the Blue and White National Unity coalition.
Radio La Costenisima and Radio Mi Voz denounce besiegement around their facilities, said the director of Mi Voz
HAVANA TIMES – “La Costenisima” in Bluefields and “Mi Voz” (My Voice) in Leon, were besieged on Friday, March 15, by members of the National Police, who militarized the streets of the country in light of the announcement of a national march in Nicaragua on Saturday.
“Several police patrols, with about 30 riot police arrived to burst in to the radio, they stayed for almost half an hour and destroyed several things that we had in the garden,” denounces Alvaro Montalvan, owner and journalist of Radio Mi Voz.
He assured that the besiegement began “because the regime thought that we were going to summon through this media” to the civic march organized by the Blue and White National Unity coalition, for Saturday March 16, which had been “prohibited” by the Ortega dictatorship.
The journalists of Radio La Costenisima also denounced through the social networks the besiegement of the Police in front of their radio station. The main streets of Bluefields remained taken by the officers, after the announcement of a demonstration to demand freedom for the political prisoners.
It is not the first time that these radios are besieged by the dictatorship. On March 1st, National Journalist Day, police from Bluefields surrounded Radio La Costenisima for forty minutes, where there were some journalists that conducted a special program on the panorama of the freedom of the press in Nicaragua.
Montalvan was abducted at the end of last October and later released. While he was detained, he was tortured, forced to strip and “presented as a trophy” to the other prisoners in Leon.
On June 23, 2018, the communicator denounced that paramilitary groups partially destroyed Radio Mi Voz: they broke the entrance gate, destroyed the transmission antennas and burned the director’s vehicle.