NICARAGUA – The director of the Nicaraguan El Nuevo Diario newspaper, Francisco Chamorro, said threats against reporter Silvia Gonzalez has made her flee to the US to avoid being murdered.
Gonzalez said the threats began after she wrote stories about the death of a former Contra rebel who fought Nicaragua’s government in the 1980s and launched another uprising against President Daniel Ortega because of the president’s plans to seek re-election.
Carlos Lauria, of the Committee to Protect Journalists responded to the news saying Nicaraguan authorities “must take all necessary measures to ensure that journalists can report critically without fear of reprisal.”
In February 2011 Nicaraguan investigative reporter Luis Galeano also received death threats in the lead-up to the publication of a series of articles on official corruption.
According to the CPJ, “driven by decades-old hostilities, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega has defined independent news media as enemies and has moved aggressively to obstruct them.”
Links to: CPJ, Associated Press, El Nuevo Diario (Spa)
Landmine survivors, El Salvador: Central America is now free of landmines, but Ottawa Convention countries agree to help survivors, not just rid their countries of mines
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Central America has become landmine-free, thanks to the elimination of all known landmines in Nicaragua, two representatives of its government told a working session of the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention Tuesday 22 June. “After two decades of work, Nicaragua is proud to announce that we have completed clearance of all known anti-personnel mines in our territory, and that all contaminated areas have been deemed safe for normal activity. The last mine was removed and destroyed on 13 April 2010,” the government’s statement notes. Colonel Spiro Bassi of the Nicaraguan Army Corps of Engineering and Juan Umana Loaisiga from the Ministry of Defense addressed the Geneva meeting.
The Convention is also known as the Ottawa Treaty.
The country removed more than 179,000 landmines, planted during its civil war in the 1980s. Nicaragua has 1,200 landmine survivors today.
The country, which signed the convention in 1997, undertook the largest demining operation in Central America. The original estimate in 1997 of 135,000 mines grew over the years as more areas with mines were discovered. Anti-personnel mines were found in 16 out of 17 regions in the country, affecting rural communities and severely impoverished areas.
The breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia began to use Russia’s international direct dialling phone code, +7, Sunday 15 November, instead of Georgia’s, +995, in a further break with Georgia. Russia and Georgia fought a war in July over South Ossetia, another breakaway region in Georgia.
“The old codes will work until Jan 1. Then they will be turned off and people will use the new codes of independent Abkhazia,” said Nadir Bitiev, a senior aide to Abkhaz leader Sergei Bagapsh, reports Reuters. Two-thirds of the International Telecommunications Union‘s (ITU) members must agree to admitting a new member. Only the Russian Federation recognizes Abkhazia as an independent country, along with Venezuela and Nicaragua. Moscow Times
Honduras’ ousted president Manuel Zelaya is in neighbouring Nicaragua at the head of a caravan of vehicles set to cross the border near El Progreso, Honduras. He has said he hopes the soldiers guarding the border will lay down their arms and recognize him as their president. The de facto government in Honduras imposed a 18:00 to 06:00 curfew on the border region and has said it will arrest Zelaya if he enters the country. US and Organization of American States (OAS) officials have counselled caution, warning of the possibility of violence. CNN, El Heraldo.hn (Spa)
A defiant Manuel Zelaya, until recently president of the Central American nation of Honduras, told a meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Nicaragua 29 June that he would return home this week. The Honduran military had bundled Zelaya onto a plane to Costa Rica early the previous day. US President Barack Obama called his ouster a coup and a “dangerous precedent”. In a bid to extend his four-year term, Zelaya clashed with congress, the supreme court, the Catholic church and even his own party, the Liberals. Elected as a centre-right candidate, Zelaya has increasingly allied himself to Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. In the capital of Honduras, Tegucigalpa, troops fired tear gas at protestors who were supporting Zelaya. BBC, Los Angeles Times, NYT
