Oxfam Novib/PEN International 2019 award - Gioconda Belli acceptance speech
From left to right: Jennifer Clement, Gioconda Belli, Dareen Tatour, Michiel Servaes
Gioconda Belli is an award-winning Nicaraguan poet, writer and activist and President of PEN Nicaragua. She has faced accusations of terrorist activity and writes under great risk in Nicaragua, a country in which over three hundred people were killed in protests against President Ortega’s government last year. She is the recipient of the 2019 Oxfam Novib/PEN International award for freedom of expression.
I come to you from the nightmarish experience of seeing my country mauled once again by the jaws of tyranny.
In the last month, freedom of expression has suffered very severe blows in Nicaragua.
Two of our most important independent media standard bearers have been viciously attacked. Carlos Fernando Chamorro, was once the director of the Sandinista newspaper Barricada. He parted ways with Daniel Ortega and the FSLN in the 90’s and began publishing an independent newsletter, Confidencial, and producing two TV shows, This week (Esta Semana) and Tonight (Esta noche) At dawn on December 19th, police forces broke into his office building, vandalized its contents and carried away his most essential equipment. That same night, with no court order, they took possession of the building and everything in it. They have remained inside the premises since then.
On December 21st, a TV station, 100% News, was also overrun by riot police, boarded up, taken off the air, and both its director and owner and its news editor were taking prisoners charged with absurd accusations such as “inciting hate” They are now in solitary confinement and no member of their families have been allowed to see them.
More than 50 journalists have been forced to go into exile because of persecution and threats.
I cannot accept this prize for myself. It belongs to the independent media in my country, to the men and women who have shown incredible courage risking their safety and freedom to keep the Nicaraguan people informed.
I thank the opportunity I have to appeal to you to not forget what’s going on in Nicaragua. The Ortega government at the first sign of popular defiance dropped all pretence of fairness and ethics and turned its guns against an unarmed population that took to the streets, first to protest a reform to a social security law but then to reject the repression and killings with which the government responded. More than 325 people, mostly students have been killed since April. More than 600 have been jailed and accused of trumped up terrorism charges and more than 30,000 Nicaraguans have fled to neighbouring countries, mostly Costa Rica. We need your sympathy, your voices, your empathy.
Our brave journalists are beginning to set shop in neighbouring Costa Rica and Miami to continue broadcasting their programs.
We’re rooting for them. I hope you do too.
Thanks to Oxfam Novib and PEN International for this prize that honours the work PEN Nicaragua has been doing on behalf of freedom of expression, and that honours me as a writer who keeps believing against all odds in the power of the word.