Nicaragua foundation announces suspension in face of new law

MANAGUA, Nicaragua — A former Nicaraguan president’s press freedom organization said Friday it was suspending its activities due to a controverisal law that seeks to exert control over groups that receive financial support from outside the country.

The Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation said the new law had made it difficult to continue operating in Nicaragua.

Foundation adviser Cristiana Chamorro, daughter of former President Violeta Chamorro who founded the organization 34 years ago and famed journalist Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, termed the new law “unconstitutional and monstrous.”

“It is very difficult to continue operating under a law like this whose objective is to suffocate civil society, and independent and free voices that this regime cannot tolerate,” Chamorro said in a virtual news conference.

The foundation is the second organization in two days to announce it was halting operations. PEN-Nicaragua, the local branch of the writers organization PEN International, said Thursday the law had forced its closure.

The law passed in December by members of the ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front party requires people and organizations receiving funds from outside Nicaragua to register as “foreign agents” with the Interior Ministry and provide detailed reports of their income and expenditures to the government or face hefty fines, jail time and seizure of their property.

The deadline for registering was Friday.

The Associated Press