RSF - Reporters sans frontières
RSF - Reporters sans frontières
12/10/2025 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 12/11/2025 07:44
RSF and Human Rights Foundation urge UN to investigate enforced disappearance of Nicaraguan journalist Fabiola Tercero
This week, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the Human Rights Foundation (HRF) have referred the case of Fabiola Tercero - a Nicaraguan journalist who disappeared after a police raid on her home in July 2024 - to the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances. As Daniel Ortega's government's persecution of the press intensifies, the international community must act to ensure that the Nicaraguan authorities shed light on the journalist's fate and put an end to her enforced disappearance.
Fabiola Tercero disappearedon 12 July 2024 shortly after reporting a raid on her home by government agents under Commissioner Lidia Baltodano's command. Since then, no public charges have been brought against her, there is no indication that any official proceedings have begun, and there is no record of her detention in the prisons where political prisoners are usually sent in the country. The well-known journalist and feminist activist worked for many years for various media outlets, including the online magazine Galeria News, for which she wrote several articles on women's rights.
On 11 November, state-controlled media outlets broadcast images of Fabiola Tercero at her mother's home in Managua, along with an "interview" in which she stated that she "had not disappeared." However, she did not specify where she had spent the previous 15 months and since this "interview", she has not been seen or heard of again.
"It is essential that the UN Working Group investigate Fabiola Tercero's fate. The Ortega regime's relentless repression of the press has led to the exile of dozens of media professionals and the disappearance of all independent journalism in the country. In this extremely serious situation - it being impossible to obtain information about the journalist's fate - the international community must commit to getting answers. For more than 15 months, RSF has been demanding, "Where is Fabiola Tercero?" The Nicaraguan government must answer immediately.
Antoine Bernard
RSF Advocacy and Assistance Director
The enforced disappearance of Fabiola Tercero is one of the most symbolic cases of repression against the pressin the country. And, as it frequently does to deny other arbitrary detentions and enforced disappearances in the country, the Nicaraguan regime is also using the state media against her.
"We are seeing a consistent pattern of extrajudicial control measures and systematic repression of Nicaraguan human rights defenders and journalists, designed to incite fear and crush all dissent in the country. We must send a strong signal to the regime that its brutal and unlawful practices of detaining and forcibly disappearing individuals are not without consequences.
Caitlin Triplett
International Legal Associate at HRF
RSF and HRF urge the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances to call on the Nicaraguan regime to shed light on Fabiola Tercero's fate and put an end to her enforced disappearance.
Published on10.12.2025
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