The Permanent Council of the Organization of American States will hold a special meeting on Thursday, December 27, at 10:00 EST (15:00 GMT) in Simón Bolívar Hall at OAS headquarters in Washington, DC to consider the situation in Nicaragua.

¨Our country will preside over the meeting of the OAS through its Permanent Representative, Ambassador, Montserrat Solano Carboni, and will raise its voice to denounce the continuous increase in violations of human rights and liberties in Nicaragua¨, explained the ad interim Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lorena Aguilar Revelo.

Costa Rica deplores that decision of the Nicaraguan Goverment to expel the mechanisms of the OAS as well as the harassment, repression, persecution, and detention of journalists, media channels, human right defenders and and civil society organizations in Nicaragua.

¨The country calls on the International Community to activate the mechanisms and the measures relative to multilateral relations to reestablish and protect the vigilance of human rights¨.

The Nicaraguan police searched the offices of channel 100% Noticias in the early hours of Saturday, December 22 and arrested the director Miguel Gaitán, and Costa Rican-Nicaraguan journalist Lucía Pineda, chief of press and a driver. They also closed down the communication channel alleging it is an illegal entity. Pineda remains in preventive imprisonment accused by the Nicaraguan government of terrorist acts and inciting hatred, among other charges.