WHEREAS the harassment, persecution and aggression of the Ortega regime against independent media has led to the exile of more than 60 journalists and in the majority of cases the shutdown of their news media in various cities in the country
WHEREAS there have occurred more than 700 cases of violence against the practice of journalism since April 2018, the majority committed by the National Police, mobs and armed civilians at the service of the government, all documented by national and international human rights bodies and journalistic organizations
WHEREAS the state institutions, especially those linked to the administration of justice, have been used to criminalize the news-gathering work of independent journalists and to attribute to them crimes without foundation or they being non-existent in the country's legislation, such as encouraging and inciting hatred and violence, provocation, proposition and conspiracy to commit terrorist acts, or crimes driven by hatred
WHEREAS the Ortega government has insisted on silencing, systematically and violently, all voices that are critical of or different from the official discourse, violating the country's Constitution which grants full rights to free expression and press freedom
WHEREAS the government is carrying out an indirect censorship of independent media, such as the holding in Customs of raw materials, equipment and spare parts for newspapers and television and radio stations, discrimination in assignment of government advertising and harassment through taxation
WHEREAS entities of the government and related organizations have taken charge of creating and disseminating false news in order to misinform and confuse people with false news and create doubts about the truth of information of the independent media, which amounts to an attack upon the right of the people to be well informed
WHEREAS the government is continuing to deny access to public information, in open violation of a specific law and the Constitution, the reason for which there are still unknown important details of the death of at least 325 citizens and more than 2,000 injuries, which would lead to specifying who are the perpetrators and masterminds of those crimes, so as to comply with the call for justice that the people are making
WHEREAS Principle 1 of the Declaration of Chapultepec establishes "No people or society can be free without freedom of expression and of the press. The exercise of this freedom is not something authorities grant, it is an inalienable right of the people."
THE IAPA MIDYEAR MEETING RESOLVES
to ask the government of President Daniel Ortega and First Lady and Vice President Rosario Murillo to immediately set free journalists Lucía Pineda Ubau and Miguel Mora Barberena and the more than 600 political prisoners jailed for exercising their right to civically protest
also that the government comply with the Constitution of Nicaragua, especially respecting Article 30 which recognizes Nicaraguans' right to freely express their thoughts, in public or privately, orally, in writing or by any other means; Article 66 which grants citizens the right to true information, and comprises the freedom to seek, receive and disseminate information and ideas, whether it be orally, in writing, graphically or by any other means of their choice; and Article 54 which recognizes the right of public gathering, demonstration and mobilization on the part of citizens' freedom of expression. Also, Article 67 specifies the right to inform as a social responsibility that cannot be subject to censorship
to urge the governments of the Americas and of other continents represented before the United Nations Council on Human Rights that they take into account the serious deterioration of freedom of expression and of the press when there is reviewed the state of human rights in Nicaragua in May this year during this UN body's Universal Periodic Review (UPR)
to ask the Civic Alliance for Justice and Democracy, which is negotiating with the government the opening of a democratization process in Nicaragua, having as witnesses the Organization of American States (OAS) and the Vatican, that there be left well established the full right to freedom of expression and of the press as the fundamental basis of development of true democracy.
