WHEREAS the government has prohibited all state authorities and autonomous bodies from giving information to the official media called "Media of the People's Authority," thus contravening the Nicaraguan Constitution
WHEREAS President Daniel Ortega has not held any press conference in the 10 years in which he has held his post and in that same time he has only presented his report to the nation before the National Congress on two occasions
WHEREAS the Law on Access to Information is a dead letter and is not complied with by the large majority of state bodies, be these the state authorities or autonomous entities, which leaves without transparency and rendition of accounts to all the state dependencies
WHEREAS the great majority of electronic media, radios and televisions are in the hands of a duopoly of which a part is the very family of the president and a foreign agent, which goes against the Nicaraguan Constitution and infringes upon the plurality of information and restricts freedom of information
WHEREAS official advertising is used to reward or punish media depending on their stances and is being used to a large extent to favor media owned by the president's family
WHEREAS some news media and human rights defense bodies have been and continue to be harassed, pestered and attacked, whether by agents of the government or by people that volunteer to attack the owners and editors, creating a climate of self-censorship
WHEREAS there exists a restraint by the Executive Branch on all the other branches' institutions, both the Judicial, beginning with the Supreme Court, the Supreme Electoral Council and the National Congress in which it controls the 70% that it has achieved, eliminating all kinds of electoral competition, a situation that makes freedom of information even more difficult
WHEREAS not being complied with are principles 2, 3, 6 and 7 of the Declaration of Chapultepec which respectively guarantee the right to people's freedom of expression, underline the responsibility of the authorities to offer public information without restrictions, that news media and journalists must not be the object of discrimination or favors in relation to what they write or say, and that the government should not use its attributions to reward or punish journalists and news media.
THE IAPA MIDYEAR MEETING RESOLVES
to ask the government of President Daniel Ortega and the First Lady and Vice President Rosario Murillo to comply with the Constitution which in its Article 66 states that "the right of the Nicaraguans to truthful information, which comprises freedom to seek, receive and disseminate information and ideas, whether oral, in writing, graphically or by any other method of one's choice" and that in its Article 68 it says "the government shall keep guard that the social news media are not subjected to foreign interests or the economic monopoly of any group"
to urge the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to take a stance.
