MEDIA organisations and high-profile supporters of Nicaragua’s Sandinista government accused Facebook of censorship today after scores of accounts were blocked just one week before the country goes to the polls.

The social media giant, which also owns Instagram, shut down platforms belonging to a number of progressive journalists, along with the accounts of major Sandinista news outlets including Redvolucion and Barricada.

Twitter also suspended the accounts of a number of pro-Sandinista journalists and supporters of the Nicaraguan government without warning, in what sources said was “politically motivated, co-ordinated censorship” by the United States.