Central American journalists can pay a heavy price for publishing unflattering stories about governments in the region – a region that has a history of civil wars and dictatorships, and where poverty, violence and corruption are rife.

A photographer was forced to flee from Nicaragua, a newspaper editor in Guatemala was arrested and a news website in El Salvador was taken to court. Such punishment is an increasingly familiar affliction in Central America.

Nicaragua’s La Prensa newspaper is almost 100 years old, but a year ago its offices were occupied by the police and the property was taken over by the state last week.

The newspaper’s manager, Juan Lorenzo Holmann, was arrested in 2021 and sentenced to nine years in prison in April this year.

A harsh critic of President Daniel Ortega’s left-wing government, he has been accused of money laundering.

That was the same charge against the owner of the Guatemalan newspaper El Periodico, Jose Ruben Zamora, who was arrested a month ago.

“Money laundering allegations are becoming more common in Central America” ??against employees of independent media, said Carlos Dada, director of the Salvadoran website El Faro, who is also accused of asset laundering.

El Faro had claimed President Nayib Bukele was involved in secret negotiations with violent drug gangs, against whom he launched an offensive that has seen more than 50,000 suspected gang members arrested under emergency laws.

“The concentration of power in the hands of authoritarian regimes is increasingly successful in silencing critics and the independent press,” Dada told the AFP news agency.

“Harassment is increasing.”

The defendants all claim they are victims of false accusations designed to silence them.

Both Nicaragua and El Salvador have accused independent media of receiving foreign funding and trying to destabilize the country.

“The strategy of drowning the independent press that Cuba installed decades ago and that has also been adopted in Venezuela and other countries in the region has recently been perfected by the Ortega regime,” said Carlos Jornet, president of the Press Freedom Commission at Inter- American Press Society (SIP).

And the trend is also spreading in traditionally stable Costa Rica.

During the election campaign, President Rodrigo Chaves attacked the press for discussing the sanctions he imposed when he was accused of sexual harassment while working at the World Bank and for exposing possible irregular campaign financing.

In July, La Prensa photographer Oscar Navarrete reported on the authorities’ expulsion to Costa Rica of an order of nuns among 1,5000 organizations deemed illegal by the government.

Angered by his reporting, the government planned to arrest him and even ransacked his home, but Navarrete had already gone into hiding.

“They took all my equipment…they destroyed everything with such violence that my mother went into shock,” said Navarrete, who lives in exile in Costa Rica.

La Prensa now operates out of the Costa Rican capital of San Jose. More than 100 journalists were forced into exile and many others were arrested for criticizing Ortega.

Zamora has accused Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei and Attorney General Consuelo Porras of fabricating a case against him to justify his imprisonment.

The US put Porras on a corrupt list for obstructing and then firing an anti-mafia prosecutor.

El Periodico has published more than 100 investigations into Giammattei’s presidency, including alleged bribes.

The president is “intolerant of criticism,” said the newspaper’s deputy editor, Lucy Chay.

The government has frozen the newspaper’s bank accounts.

“They want to kill the newspaper,” Chay added.

“They appear to increase harassment of journalists investigating corruption, human rights abuses and abuse of power,” Human Rights Watch (HRW) director Juan Pappier told AFP.

Several prosecutors and judges investigating corruption in Guatemala have been subjected to “apparent criminal proceedings,” Pappier added.

As part of its crackdown on criminal groups, El Salvador has passed a law making the reproduction of gang messages punishable by up to 13 years in prison.

El Faro took issue with this by publishing interviews with people claiming to be gangsters and saying they negotiated with Bukele, who denies the allegations.

Dada says his cell phone and that of 20 El Faro colleagues are infected with the Pegasus virus, which is only sold to government agencies.

The government denies any involvement.

In addition to threats, intimidation and harassment, there are also murders.

Honduras has recorded 97 murders of journalists since 2001, says the country’s Committee on Freedom of Expression.

The committee’s director, Amada Ponce, says the press cannot cover issues like drug trafficking and mining without taking great risks.

Journalists are “prosecuted, stigmatized or threatened” just for doing their jobs, Amada said.