The Washington Post - 05.08.2019

A4 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.MONDAY, AUGUST 5 , 2019

investigative reporting.

“We can’t dedicate a team to a

story that could take four, five, six

days, or two weeks,” he said.

It has also fought off massive

cyberattacks — including one in

May, when bots fired 11,000 re-

quests per second at the website,

according to its managers.

The paper has tried to expand

its daily circulation of about

25,000 by focusing on its fledg-

ling website, which attracts

around 2 million unique users a

month. But like most news or-

ganizations, La Prensa will need

time before online subscription

income can maintain its news-

room.

“The independent media are in

danger of disappearing,” En-

ríquez said.

Not everyone is as pessimistic.

Carlos Fernando Chamorro, 63, is

Jaime’s nephew. Like his grand-

father, he has gone into exile

because of his journalism.

He fled to Costa Rica in Janu-

ary, weeks after police raided the

offices of his news website, Confi-

dencial, and those of the inde-

pendent broadcaster 100%

Noticias.

In an especially chilling move,

police hauled away the founder

and news director of 100% Noti-

cias in December on terrorism

charges. The journalists spent 172

days in jail before being freed as

part of a release of political pris-

oners.

“This is the bad part of the

story,” Carlos Fernando Chamor-

ro said. “But I see in this crisis the

great capacity of the Nicaraguan

press to resist.”

His newsroom in Managua has

not been allowed to reopen. But

Chamorro edits his site from

abroad, with newsgathering by

reporters still in Nicaragua.

“We haven’t stopped produc-

ing information and investigat-

ing and criticizing,” he said.

When Chamorro’s TV program

was forced off the air in Nicara-

gua, he moved it to YouTube and

Facebook Live.

His work as one of the leaders

of Nicaragua’s independent me-

dia is not without its ironies. In

the early years of the Sandinista

government, he edited the party’s

official newspaper, Barricada —

and regularly blasted La Prensa.

He w as kicked out of the Sandi-

nista paper in 1994, as he became

convinced the party needed to

become more democratic.

La Prensa is no longer the

dominant institution it was back

when his father was slain,

Chamorro said.

“Today it’s part of a whole

group of media” that feel free to

criticize the government, he said.

“But it continues to carry a lot of

weight and have a lot of influ-

ence.”

It is unclear how much longer

it will have that clout. One Friday

in January, La Prensa appeared

with a blank front page, to high-

light the threat posed by the

government’s stranglehold on its

newsprint.

“Have you imagined living

without information?” it asked in

an editorial.

[email protected]

Ismael Lopez Ocampo contributed to

this article.

lease the newsprint but that they

have not budged.

“They have an order from on

high not to provide it,” the pub-

lisher said.

The customs office did not re-

spond to a request for comment.

The office has also restricted

deliveries to El Nuevo Diario, the

country’s second-most-impor-

tant newspaper. The broadsheet

started publishing as a tabloid

last week for the want of news-

print.

As L a Prensa has hemorrhaged

money, its newsroom has shrunk

from 100 to about 35 journalists.

Enríquez said it no longer does

into a nationwide movement call-

ing for Ortega’s resignation. More

than 325 people were killed as

police and paramilitaries battled

demonstrators. (The government

has called the uprising a U.S.-

financed coup attempt.)

Reporters covering the rebel-

lion were threatened and their

equipment seized. Some fled the

country.

As the economy shriveled, so

did La Prensa’s advertising sales.

Then came the dispute over the

92 tons of newsprint stuck in

Nicaraguan customs. Chamorro

said that an administrative court

ordered customs officials to re-

air force attacked the paper in

1979, in Somoza’s waning days in

power.

“They burned everything ex-

cept this,” Chamorro said. “It was

a warehouse.”

Such turmoil had been a con-

stant in the 93-year history of the

newspaper. By 2007, though,

when Ortega returned to power,

Nicaragua seemed to have en-

tered a calmer era. He warmed to

private enterprise and promised

moderate policies.

But in 2018, the country was

again engulfed by political up-

heaval, as protests over cuts to the

social security program swelled

To day, the paper reflects a

country gripped by fear. On a

recent day, its home page fea-

tured an article on political pris-

oners and a video showing police

firing tear gas at protesters.

“La Prensa symbolizes the

heart of the Nicaraguan media,”

said Guillermo Rothschuh Villan-

ueva, a prominent scholar of jour-

nalism.

Its closure, he said, would be “a

mortal blow.”

Jaime Chamorro, 85, works

from a cluttered office in a small,

palm-shaded building behind La

Prensa’s headquarters. He moved

there after the national guard and

BY MARY BETH SHERIDAN

managua, nicaragua — Jaime
Chamorro, a member of Central
America’s most prominent jour-
nalism dynasty, remembers the
first time he felt the government’s
wrath.
The Nicaraguan dictator, Anas-
tasio Somoza Garcia, had shut
down his family’s newspaper and
forced his father into exile.
“I was 10,” Chamorro says.
Seventy-five years later, La
Prensa has become a legend for
its fearless reporting and editori-
als — and its persistence. It has
been closed, temporarily, by
right- and left-wing governments
alike. One editor was assassinat-
ed. Its headquarters were
bombed.
But now, the paper might be
facing its greatest threat yet.
“They’ve cut off our news-
print,” said Chamorro, the pub-
lisher, sitting in an office
crammed with papers and photos
of his family.
La Prensa is a target of one of
the most severe clampdowns on
independent media in the hemi-
sphere. Over the past year, as
President Daniel Ortega has
crushed a student-led rebel-
lion, his government has raided
news organizations and harassed
and jailed reporters. More
than 100 journalists have gone
into exile, according to the U.N.
human rights body.
The government customs of-
fice has held up La Prensa’s im-
ports of newsprint and ink since
October, according to its editors.
Nicaragua’s leading daily is now a
skeletal eight pages — down from
36.
While La Prensa operates a
website, it still draws most of its
income from its newspaper. As i ts
supply of newsprint dwindles, the
entire organization could be
forced to close.
“This is the most critical situa-
tion we have lived in peace-
time,” s aid Eduardo Enríquez, the
paper’s editor.
La Prensa has a long history of
scrapping with Ortega, the one-
time Marxist revolutionary —
and Ronald Reagan nemesis —
who led Nicaragua’s Sandinista
government in the 1980s. Back
then, Ortega shut down the paper
for more than a year, charging
that it supported U.S.-funded reb-
els.
Ortega, who returned to the
presidency in 2007 and has been
reelected twice since, has become
increasingly authoritarian. His
government did not respond to a
request for an interview.
If he succeeds in throttling La
Prensa, Nicaragua will lose not
only its oldest daily but also an
institution entwined with the
country’s modern history.
Its most famous editor, Pedro
Joaquín Chamorro — Jaime’s
brother — was gunned down in
1978, swinging public opinion
against Anastasio Somoza De-
bayle, the last of the three Somoza
dictators.
The killing helped sweep the
Sandinistas into power. Ortega
ruled until 1990, when Chamor-
ro’s widow, Violeta, who had suc-
ceeded him as publisher of La
Prensa, defeated him at the polls
to win the presidency.

The World

SUDAN

Protesters, military sign

power-sharing deal

Sudan’s p ro-democracy
movement s igned a power-
sharing agreement with the r uling
military council on Sunday, a imed
at p aving t he way for a transition
to civilian rule following the
overthrow of President Omar
Hassan al-Bashir in April.
Representatives initialed a
constitutional d ocument t hat
would e stablish a joint military
and civilian council to rule for a
little over three years until
elections can be held. The
agreement would establish a
cabinet a ppointed by the activists,
as well a s a legislative body.
The military overthrew Bashir
after m onths o f mass protests
against h is autocratic rule. T he
protesters remained in t he
streets, d emanding a rapid
transition to a civilian authority.
They h ave been locked in tense
negotiations with t he military for
weeks while h olding protests.
The two sides reached a
preliminary agreement l ast
month after international
pressure, amid growing concerns
that t he p olitical crisis could

ignite civil w ar.

That d ocument provided for

the e stablishment of a civilian-

military sovereign council. A

military leader w ould head t he 11-

member c ouncil for the f irst 21

months, followed by a civilian

leader f or the n ext 18.

The constitutional document

signed Sunday is aimed at

clarifying the division of powers

and s ettling other outstanding

disputes.

The final s igning of the power-

sharing d eal is s et t o take place

Aug. 17.

— Associated Press

KASHMIR

Lockdown imposed

as tensions intensify

Te nsions h ave soared along the

volatile, highly militarized

frontier between India and

Pakistan in the disputed

Himalayan r egion of Kashmir, a s

India h as deployed m ore troops

and o rdered t housands of visitors

out o f the region.

Along the L ine o f Control that

separates Kashmir between t he

archrivals, Indian s hots S unday

wounded a woman, and the

ongoing s kirmishes spread fear in

border v illages, Pakistani p olice

said. The frontier residents o n the

Pakistani side are either moving

out t o safer places or have b egun

construction of n ew b unkers,

with s ome strengthening existing

shelters n ear their homes.

Pakistan and India, w hich both

claim Kashmir i n its entirety,

routinely blame each other for

initiating border skirmishes.

The measures have sparked

fears in K ashmir that New D elhi

is planning to scrap an Indian

constitutional provision that

forbids Indians from outside the

region f rom buying land in t he

Muslim-majority t erritory. In

recent days, Hindu-majority

India h as deployed at least 10,

troops in K ashmir.

— Associated Press

Death toll in Philippine ferry

accidents climbs to 31: Rescuers

recovered more bodies in rough

seas where three ferries capsized

after being buffeted by fierce

winds and waves off two central

Philippine provinces, bringing the

death toll to 31 with three missing,

the coast guard said. A coast guard

spokesman said the dead were

mostly passengers of two ferries

that flipped over off Guimaras and

Iloilo provinces. Sixty-two other

passengers and crew members

were rescued. A third ferry, w hich

was not carrying any passengers,

capsized in the Iloilo Strait, the

spokesman said, but its crew

survived.

U.N. agency, Yemeni rebels

reach deal to restore aid: The

U.N. f ood agency said i t reached

an agreement w ith Yemen’s rebels

to resume f ood deliveries t o rebel-

controlled parts of the country

after s uspending t he aid for over a

month. The partial s uspension of

aid to the capital, S anaa, began i n

June amid a ccusations that t he

Houthi rebels w ere diverting the

food from the h ungriest p eople in

the w ar-torn country, w hich has

been pushed to the brink of

starvation. The Houthis, w ho

have controlled t he capital since

2014, denied the charges.

Indonesian capital hit by eight-

hour outage: Indonesia’s c apital

and o ther p arts o f the Java island

were hit by a power outage that

affected tens o f millions of

people. T he eight-hour blackout

caused disruptions in cellphone

service a nd c ash machines. The

subway system i n Jakarta, the

capital, had to shut down. A

spokesman for the state-owned

electricity company PLN said the

blackout w as caused b y problems

with a gas turbine at a power

plant a nd by a disruption a t

another facility.

Assad’s wife says she is free of

cancer: The wife of Syria’s

president said in an i nterview

with state TV t hat she is

“completely” f ree of b reast cancer

a year after her d iagnosis. T he

half-hour interview w as Asma

Assad’s f irst since being

diagnosed.

— From news services

DIGEST

KHAM/REUTERS

A man drives on a flooded road Sunday after Tropical Storm Wipha

passed Hanoi. In Hong Kong, schools closed last week as the storm

neared, bringing heavy wind and rain, the Associated Press reported.

Ortega keeps chokehold on Nicaragua’s legendary La Prensa

The Chamorro family’s paper survived bombings and an assassination. Now the customs office won’t let it have the newsprint it needs to survive.

PHOTOS BY INTI OCON/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

ABOVE: A security

guard reads the

Jan. 19 edition of La

Prensa, which ran

with a blank front

page to highlight the

threat posed by the

government’s refusal

to release its

newsprint from

customs.

LEFT: A guard

watches the presses.

La Prensa is a target

of one of the most

severe clampdowns

on independent media

in the hemisphere.