After his departure, the police occupied his home and his vehicle. His family members were harassed and threatened.
Among a crowd of fans at the National Football Stadium in Managua, photojournalist Oswaldo Rivas of the French Press Agency (AFP) escaped capture while he was covering a story in Managua. He was alerted by his colleagues that the police were asking about him, which allowed him to evade his pursuers.
“I pretended I was going to the press conference after the game and I turned to the bathroom, then I opened an iron gate and saw the fans leaving the stadium and I slipped in there. I got lost in the crowd. I never returned home from there. That same night some patrol cars came to my house and in the morning they came again,” he told LA PRENSA from his forced exile in the United States.
The regime’s police began following him for a job he was planning to do with a French journalist who had entered the country as a tourist.
“He wanted to do a story about the Church and about faith in Nicaragua. He contacted me, we started making contacts for the interviews, which was very difficult because in Nicaragua nobody wants to talk. He came as a tourist because they can’t enter the country as journalists, we met in Granada to see what we were going to do, there we started working. But from the first day they started to attack us, in the end we didn’t do anything because we only went to the Granada Cathedral and from there they were already following us, when we left the Cathedral the patrol was outside, that means that the phones were being tapped,” he says.
After leaving the stadium, Rivas spent two days in hiding until he managed to make contacts to be able to leave through blind spots towards Honduras. “Without being able to return home or go to relatives or friends so as not to compromise them, I spent three days in the same clothes, until I arrived in Honduras and was able to shower and dress in the clothes they gave me,” he says.
When the regime’s police did not find him at home, they looked for him at the homes of his relatives, whom they pressured to tell them where he was. Rivas had been careful not to communicate with them because the police took their phones to see if they had calls from him.
The only thing that is known about the French journalist is that he was detained by the police at the border, was taken to El Chipote where he was held for two days and then was expelled from the country. LA PRENSA has tried to contact him, but so far there has been no response.
30 years of photojournalism, most of them with international agencies
Rivas, who has been dedicated to the profession for more than 30 years, 23 of them with the Reuters agency and then with AFP, says that after the repression against the protests in 2018 he lived the most difficult days of his professional career that translated into persecution, harassment and constant surveillance.
“You know that for them (the regime) all journalism is bad, everything you do is bad, even if it has nothing to do with politics,” he says.
You can read: Sandinista magistrates who have directed electoral fraud in Nicaragua “accompany” the elections in Venezuela
He remembers an occasion during the socio-political crisis when a police commissioner in Monimbó, Masaya, furiously pointed an AK at him and forced him to leave the place where he was covering the protests. He also remembers the time he was expelled from a public event by intelligence officers of the Nicaraguan Army during a military parade.
“There are still many stories to tell in Nicaragua, but the issue is how we tell them with this government,” he asks.
Police seized his property
The photojournalist reported that after he left Nicaragua, the police seized his house located at kilometer 11 of the old highway to León and valued at 250 thousand dollars. His vehicle was also seized.
“I don’t know if my house has been confiscated, they tell me that there are police inside my house, they took everything, even a van from a friend that had lent me, I don’t have anything anymore. I’m a little sad because I’m practically at zero, I’m starting over like 30 years ago,” he lamented.
Rivas says that with the work of his life and that of his wife they built that house and gave education to their children, but now he fears that he has lost everything “and the only thing I was doing was working in journalism, which I have done all my life,” he said.
No lawyer in Nicaragua wants to take his case
He explained that he has consulted several lawyers in Nicaragua to make the claim for his assets, but they are all afraid to take the case.
“We spoke with lawyers and they told us that it was better not to do anything, that there it would be a problem.
“Leave it and if they try to find out about the case they could lose their license to practice. I have consulted four lawyers and they have told me the same thing, if the police are inside there, leave them there, we can’t do anything,” he said.
Rivas is now seeking to obtain protection from the United States through political asylum to rebuild his life and his future in freedom with his family.