Freedom Is Shut Down

Nicaragua’s Sandinista leaders claim that they are protecting national security by closing down the opposition newspaper La Prensa. They are actually displaying, for all the world to see, the totalitarian tendencies that have alienated their government from so many Nicaraguans.

Clearly Nicaragua is facing a serious threat from the United States now that the House of Representatives has approved President Reagan’s misguided request for $100 million in aid for the anti-Sandinista rebels known as contras. When facing military threats, governments often revert to censorship of newspapers and other communications media. But La Prensa has been under government censorship for years now, and its editors have cooperated with Sandinista censors while also trying to remain true to their principles as an opposition newspaper. Even if La Prensa has not always been constructive in its criticism of the Sandinistas, any government that is truly popular with its people can withstand the criticism of a single newspaper. In fact, the Sandinista decree ordering the paper to cease publication for “an indefinite period” was handed down not because of anything that La Prensa did but as a symbolic gesture in response to the vote on contra aid.

Just as troubling as the La Prensa decision was the way in which pro-government newspapers began attacking other segments of Nicaragua’s loyal opposition after the contra-aid vote. The leaders of several political parties, some prominent businessmen and several bishops of the nation’s Roman Catholic Church were vilified by name in anti-U.S. editorials published by pro-government newspapers. These unjustified attacks are probably the somber precursors of a harsh crackdown on civil liberties inside Nicaragua as the Sandinistas prepare for a long fight with the contras, whom they regard as merely a surrogate army for the Reagan Administration.