[net.politics] Censorship Toughened in Nicaragua

ekrell@ucla-cs.UUCP (12/15/85)

I willl continue with the L.A. Times article on Nicaragua.

Censorship Toughened

  Government censorship policy has also been toughened since Oct. 15. Vivas
said censorship of the nation's Roman Catholic radio station "has turned more
rigid, more ironclad." Also, the Permanent Commision on Human Rights has
been told to stop distributing its mimeographed monthly reports.
  La Prensa, the only opposition daily newspaper, has been prohibited from
passing around photocopies of articles censored out of the paper. And the
amount of material censored "has increased tremendously, from 40% to 60%"
of total news content, La Prensa editor Jaime Chamorro said in a recent
press conference.
  The Government suspended publication of the newspaper for two editions
because Camorro passed out copies of censored articles at the news conference.

[ I recall that in a recent net discussion about censorship in Nicaragua,
defenders of the Sandinistas argued that it was ok since La Prensa was allowed
to publish the censored articles. Well, now that they are not even allowed
to distribute them by hand, what do YOU have to say? ]
-- 
    Eduardo Krell               UCLA Computer Science Department
    ekrell@ucla-locus.arpa      ..!{sdcrdcf,ihnp4,trwspp,ucbvax}!ucla-cs!ekrell

mroddy@enmasse.UUCP (Mark Roddy) (12/20/85)

> 
> Censorship Toughened
> 
> 
> [ I recall that in a recent net discussion about censorship in Nicaragua,
> defenders of the Sandinistas argued that it was ok since La Prensa was allowed
> to publish the censored articles. Well, now that they are not even allowed
> to distribute them by hand, what do YOU have to say? ]

The Nicaraguan revolution has followed the same bleak course established in
modern times by the Soviet regime. A popular revolutionary movement, truly
expressing the "will of the people," slowly is transformed into a totalitarian
regime, usually more odious than the deposed tyrants.

It is part of the pattern that the totalitarian faction within a revolutionary
movement is greatly aided in its quest for power by the existance of an
external threat to the revolution. Using the excuse of wartime emergency,
the new despots remove all civil liberties, and attempt to install themselves
as the new ruling class.

One can only speculate as to the course that the Nicaraguan revolution would
have taken had there been no contra threat to justify the move to
left-wing totalitarianism.

-- 
						Mark Roddy
						Net working,
						Just reading the news.

					(harvard!talcott!panda!enmasse!comm!mark)