“Threats to freedom of expression in Central America became a regional pattern over the past year. A report by the Universal de Costa Rica’s (UCR) Program for Freedom of Expression and the Right to Information (PROLEDI) documents increased persecution of journalists, smear campaigns, restrictions on reporting and the exile of journalists.
Unlike in the study’s first editions, these pressures are no longer concentrated solely in countries with the highest levels of authoritarianism, such as Nicaragua. Instead, they are affecting El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Costa Rica, to varying degrees.
[…]
Of the five countries analyzed, Nicaragua faces the most critical situation. The report says the country ‘continues to represent the most extreme case of suppression of press freedom’ and attributes the situation to the closure and expropriation of media outlets, judicial persecution and the mass exile of journalists. As a result, it adds, ‘critical information about the country is produced almost exclusively from abroad.’ ”
