The UN culture agency awarded its annual press award to Nicaragua’s oldest newspaper, whose staff have been forced to publish from abroad as President Daniel Ortega tightens his grip on power. La Prensa, a title almost 100 years old, has been publishing online since Nicaraguan police in 2021 stormed its premises and arrested its manager Juan Lorenzo Holmann Chamorro.
A Nicaraguan court in 2022 sentenced Holmann to nine years in jail then in 2023 deported him to the United States. “La Prensa has made courageous efforts to report the truth to the people of Nicaragua,” said Yasuomi Sawa, the chair of the jury for the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize 2025.
“Like other civil society organizations, La Prensa has faced severe repression. Forced into exile, this newspaper courageously keeps the flame of press freedom alive,” he said. Ortega, 79, first served as president from 1985 to 1990 as a former guerrilla hero and returned to power in 2007.
Nicaragua has jailed hundreds of opponents since then. It has also shut down more than 5,000 non-governmental organizations since the 2018 mass protests, in which the United Nations estimates more than 300 people died.
Since Ortega’s re-election for a fourth consecutive term in 2021, in Nicaragua “independent media has continued to endure a nightmare of censorship, intimidation and threats”, media rights group Reporters Without Borders said. Most of the country’s independent and opposition media now operate from abroad.
Apostles of freedom of expression
La Prensa – El Diario de los Nicaraguenses (“The Nicaraguan Peoples’ Journal”) has seen successive troubles since it was founded in 1926. Right-wing dictator Anastasio Somoza sought to shut it down in the 1950s and the leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front tried to muzzle it in the 1980s.
“In nearly a century of existence, La Prensa and its journalists have faced numerous acts of repression, which have intensified in recent years with restrictions on its distribution,” UNESCO said. “Since 2021, following the imprisonment and expulsion of its leaders and the confiscation of its assets, La Prensa has continued to inform the Nicaraguan population online, with most of its team in exile, operating from Costa Rica, Spain, Mexico, Germany and the United States,” it said.
Holmann said the award was welcome “recognition that gives strength to freedom of press in Nicaragua”. “In Nicaragua independent journalism doesn’t exist. The dictatorship criminalizes it,” he added. He said that continuing to be a journalist required serious devotion. He dedicated the award to “all independent journalists continuing to report from outside Nicaragua”. “They are the apostles of freedom of expression,” he said.
UN experts last month found Ortega, his wife and co-president Rosario Murillo, and dozens of senior officials responsible for arbitrary detentions, torture and extrajudicial executions.
