Banishment of Nicaraguan Journalist Marcos Medina Slammed
“Unfortunately, Medina’s case joins that of 208 other journalists who, since 2018, have been forced into exile or asylum in other countries.”
HAVANA TIMES – On Tuesday, August 1, the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) condemned another attack by Daniel Ortega’s regime against independent journalism, after learning of the exile of journalist Marcos Medina and his family, who were prevented from returning home to Nicaragua.
Medina, director of the digital media Fuentes Confiables (Reliable Sources), was visiting Florida for a family medical matter. On July 24, as he was about to return to Nicaragua with his wife and daughter, the airline notified them that Nicaragua’s Immigration authorities had denied them entry into the country.
IAPA President Michael Greenspon, global director of licensing and print innovation at The New York Times, condemned the regime’s new aggression against Medina and his family. “We continue to denounce the cruelty of the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship, which violates the human rights of its citizens at will.”
Carlos Jornet, president of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, added that “although Medina had managed to exercise profession within Nicaragua, it is evident that the government, in the best style of the Cuban dictatorship, took advantage of his trip abroad to banish him.”
More than 200 journalists have been forced into exile since 2018
Jornet, director of the Argentine newspaper La Voz del Interior, said “unfortunately, Medina’s case joins that of 208 other journalists who have been forced into exile or asylum in other countries since 2018.”
Fuentes Confiables said that prior to the exile, Medina had been harassed on social networks by Sandinista sympathizers and suffered police siege at his home, among other acts of harassment.
Medina worked between 2015 and 2018 at the newspaper La Prensa, and before that at Radio Corporación and Canal 12.
In February, the regime expelled 222 political prisoners and stripped them of their nationality, as well as 94 others, including 10 journalists, who remained in the country. The report on Nicaragua presented at the IAPA meeting last April, states: “The regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo intensified its attacks against freedom of the press and expression in this period.”