PARIS — Nicaragua angrily announced its withdrawal from the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in a letter that UNESCO’s director general, Audrey Azoulay, said she received Sunday morning.

In the letter seen by The Associated Press, Nicaraguan Foreign Minister Valdrack Jaentschke denounced the awarding of a UNESCO press freedom prize to a Nicaraguan newspaper, La Prensa.

The prize jury hailed the newspaper’s work in the face of “severe repression” and reporting from exile that “courageously keeps the flame of press freedom alive” in the Central American country.

Nicaragua’s government, led by President Daniel Ortega and his wife and co-president, Rosario Murillo, has been cracking down on dissent since it violently repressed protests in 2018, claiming they were backed by foreign powers that sought his overthrow.

In his letter to UNESCO, Jaentschke claimed La Prensa is pro-U.S. media and “represents the vile betrayal against our Motherland.”

— The Associated Press