Nicaraguan Gov. Blocks Independent Media from Their Domain
Expecting just such an action, Confidencial emigrated to another domain in 2022. However, the site that redirected users from the old address is now blocked. Those wishing to access Confidencial must now directly input: “confidencial.digital”.
HAVANA TIMES – As of Friday, March 14, the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo moved to block independent media websites from using the domain .ni. Among those affected are Confidencial, La Prensa, 100% Noticias, and Onda Local.
Foreseeing just such a blockade, Confidencial registered their site under a different domain on June 23, 2022; all of their information is now at “confidencial.digital”. The news organization asks users who were still utilizing the old address [“confidencial.com.ni”] to go directly to the newer url, since the blockade has disabled the mechanism that previously redirected web traffic to the actual site. Similarly, the magazine “Niu,” a project of Confidencial, must now be accessed at “revistaniu.com”.
Onda Local and the newspaper La Prensa also adopted new domains, but maintained a site that redirected traffic from their former web addresses. This is now blocked.
In the case of 100% Noticias, another popular news site, the website is temporarily down. Their news team denounced: “The dictatorship of Daniel Ortega has ordered the 100% Noticias site blocked under the domain .ni, in a new attempt at censorship of the independent press.”
The measure was carried out by the government-run National Engineering University (UNI), the institution that administers all the domains under .ni, via NIC.NI, the organization charged with the administration and functioning of the geographic top-level domain corresponding to Nicaragua.
NIC.NI is responsible for assigning and registering domain names with the “ni” termination, including com.ni, gob.ni, and edu.ni, among others. UNIs General Secretary, in turn, administers NIC.NI.
The University manages Nicaraguan domains
The National Engineering University in its role as administrator of the country’s domains, did not notify the affected parties, even those up to date on all their payments. The University has not made any reference to the denunciations of blockage from the affected media outlets.
According to independent Nicaraguan news sites operating in exile, the UNI, as the .ni domain administrator should be obligated to follow the norms established by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), and the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), two bodies responsible for the global coordination of the top level domains.
Arbitrary blockage or suspension of sites without justification, and with clear political motivations that violate the rights and freedoms of citizens, also violate the policies of the ICANN, which demands neutral and transparent management of domains, the affected parties pointed out.
The UNI measure is one more attack on independent journalism in Nicaragua, where the dictatorship has closed or confiscated 61 Nicaraguan media outlets. Currently, four journalists are in prison in the country and the regime’s repressive policies have forced at least 283 journalists into exile, according to a Confidencial report.
“This will have serious consequences for them [the UNI]. It’s not for lack of payments – we’ve paid for our domain rights until 2027. We consulted them, but they have yet to respond to us. We understand that if it had been a technical problem, they would have responded immediately, but we also see that only certain media sites were affected. We were the only one among them still using “100Noticias.com.ni” as our principal domain,” explained Lucia Pineda Ubau, director of “100% Noticias.”
“In the face of this censorship, 100% Noticias is now working to register its website under a new domain: www.100noticias.tv so as to continue guaranteeing Nicaraguans within and outside the country access to information,” Ubau announced.
First published in Spanish by Confidencial and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.