‘Not even Orwell could have dreamed up a country like this’: Journalists flee Nicaragua
LA TimesOn Father’s Day last year, Octavio Enríquez shared pizza and soda with his two children. “I’m on the right side of history.” Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and his wife and Vice President Rosario Murillo lead a rally in Managua, Nicaragua. With virtually no independent media left inside the country and foreign reporters banned from entering, Nicaragua has become “an information black hole,” said Natalie Southwick of the Committee to Protect Journalists. The Ortega family and its allies own multiple television and radio channels that portray the United States as “the Yankee empire” and pro-democracy protesters as “coup plotters,” “terrorists” and “termites.” “Not even Orwell could have dreamed up a country like this,” said Gioconda Belli, a writer and former guerrilla fighter who was the president of PEN Nicaragua until the freedom-of-expression group was booted from the country last year. “We all think about and dream about a future without Ortega.” “Of course there are times when you feel frustrated,” says Nestor Arce as he drives through the streets of San Jose, Costa Rica.
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