The newspaper La Prensa fires almost half of its workers for the persecution of Daniel Ortega

Drowned by the persecution of the Daniel Ortega regime, the newspaper

, the largest and longest-lived in Nicaragua, announced on Wednesday the dismissal of almost half of its workers, personnel linked to writing, finance, circulation, marketing, warehouses and printing. Although the newspaper has not made public the number of dismissals, sources close to the media have affirmed that there are 116 collaborators - 11 of them journalists - who were notified through an internal communication. The dismissals come 33 days after the Nicaraguan police took over the writing, detained its general manager, Juan Lorenzo Holmann, and authorities frozen the newspaper's bank accounts."This situation forced us to make the painful decision to reduce our staff to operate only with enough numbers to continue being informed from our website and guarantee the survival of the company in the midst of a hostile environment imposed on us by the dictatorship," he said. affirmed the board of directors of

in a statement posted on its website.

Political crisis in Nicaragua

• The Ortega police raid the main Nicaraguan newspaper and accuse it of "customs fraud"

• The Government of Daniel Ortega leaves the main newspaper of Nicaragua without paper and takes out of circulation

• 'La Prensa', the oldest newspaper in Nicaragua that the Ortega regime intends to suffocate

The police broke into the newspaper's premises on August 13. Officials took over the newsroom and the administrative area of ​​the newspaper on the same day that its printed edition was suspended due to lack of paper, due to a new customs embargo imposed by the Government. The Police justified taking the newsroom by stating in a statement that an investigation was opened against Grupo Editorial

and its directors for the alleged crimes of "customs fraud, money laundering, property and assets." Since then the newspaper only publishes on the internet. This is the most recent coup by the regime against the independent press in Nicaragua, after the second raid on the editorial staff of the magazine

and the arrest warrant for its director, journalist Carlos Fernando Chamorro, exiled in Costa Rica.

The empty offices of the newspaper La Prensa in Managua, on August 12.picture alliance / Getty Images

The Press

It was founded in 1926 and has been the protagonist of the main events that have marked the recent history of a country as troubled as Nicaragua. The Somoza dictatorship - which ruled the Caribbean nation for more than four decades - ordered in 1978 the assassination of its director, journalist Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, the most critical voice against the regime. He also closed the newspaper on several occasions and launched the artillery and aviation of the National Guard against its headquarters in June 1979, a few weeks before the dynasty was overthrown by the guerrillas of the Sandinista Front. The revolutionary government of the eighties also besieged the newspaper, which suffered censorship and the withholding of supplies, and whose journalists were the target of repression. A history that repeats itself since 2007,when Ortega returned to power and imposed the harassment of the media and journalists as a state policy.

In the statement made public on Wednesday, the newspaper's board of directors, after demanding the return of the facilities, challenged the Ortega regime, stating that despite the official persecution, the newspaper will continue to report: “42 years ago we titled 'The buried will be them ', when Somocismo tried to end La Prensa by assassinating our martyr director.

Today, this other ruthless dictatorship once again tries to destroy us, but as it happened with the Somoza dictatorship more than 40 years ago,

will prevail to narrate the fall of Ortega ”.

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