"An estimated 268 Nicaraguan journalists have fled the Central American country for exile, many settling in the neighboring Costa Rica, to escape what CPJ’s research has documented to be a government-backed system of political repression and judicial harassment against media outlets that often prevents journalists, fearing for their families, from reporting the truth. Yet for some exiled journalists, who spoke to CPJ on condition of anonymity due to security concerns, that repression has followed them beyond borders.
Forced to uproot their operations to deliver critical reporting from the outside, the exiled journalists say they are still being targeted by Nicaragua’s state security with covert persuasion, coercion, and psychological pressure tactics in hopes of repressing their dissenting voices and gaining information about the whereabouts of others. Yet on the heels of the Trump administration’s dismantling of USAID funding — funding that many news outlets rely on across Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela—the journalists say their lives and their livelihoods hang in the balance now more than ever."
