Michelle Bachelet, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, expressed concern over “the dramatic reduction in civic space” in Nicaragua over the past three months in an update to the U.N. Human Rights Council on June 16. The High Commissioner noted increasing harassment of Catholic priests by the national police, a government seizure of personal universities and the “appalling conditions” experienced by political detainees.
The clampdown has been provoked by continuing resistance to the effectively one-party government led by former Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega. In November 2021 Mr. Ortega won a fourth consecutive term as president of Nicaragua, and Rosario Murillo, Mr. Ortega’s wife, was re-elected vice chairman. The election was characterised by the U.S. State Department as a “sham.” The State Department charges that the Ortega-Murillo regime denied Nicaraguans free and fair elections by dissolving opposing political parties and imprisoning all the key opposition candidates.
Human rights in Nicaragua have deteriorated significantly since a political crisis in 2018 pitted the increasingly authoritarian Ortega government against democracy and political reform advocates.
In her report Ms. Bachelet warned that human rights in Nicaragua have deteriorated significantly since a political crisis in 2018 pitted the increasingly authoritarian Ortega government against democracy and political reform advocates. That 12 months, student demonstrations were joined by hundreds of average Nicaraguans demanding political reforms. The federal government responded violently and 355 people were killed, in keeping with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
A fear that set in amongst the general public since then persists. Most people interviewed for this report asked to stay anonymous, apprehensive about reprisals from the federal government or its unofficial enforcers amongst Sandinista Party supporters. Many recall two incidents especially which have had a chilling effect on public resistance to the Ortega-Murillo regime.
Alvaro Conrado was a 15-year-old student on the Loyola Institute, a Jesuit highschool in Managua, who was killed while protesting peacefully on April 20, 2018. Local media reported that he had been shot within the throat while taking water to protestors. His last moments as he struggled to breathe were shared widely on social media. Alvaro was denied medical care at a public hospital.
A source, who asked to be called Pedro, said the bullet that killed Alvaro got here from a sniper positioned on the Managua baseball stadium, a spot he has since refused to go to.
Other Managuans recall a protest on Nicaragua’s Mother’s Day, May 30, 2018. A source, who asked to be called Luna, said many protesters marched in solidarity with the moms of scholars who had been killed by the federal government. Luna, her mom, grandma and aunt attended the march, carrying the Nicaraguan flag. They wanted to point out that their loyalty was to their country, moderately than with a political party, she recalled.
Monsignor Silvio Fonseca: “The church cannot negotiate principles. The church cannot negotiate fundamentals. That’s what is at the center of the matter.”
Nicaraguan police and armed pro-government groups, described as “Sandinista mobs,” attacked protesters, in keeping with Amnesty International. Luna remembered that officials on the University of Central America, the Jesuit university of Managua, opened the campus to permit protestors to take shelter from snipers firing from the baseball stadium. “We never thought they might kill folks that day,” she said. “However the U.C.A. did what a Jesuit university should do; it protected human rights.” Luna is a U.C.A. graduate.
Attacks against the Catholic Church
In May Nicaraguan police blocked access to the St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in Masaya for nine days. The police arrange checkpoints on the intersections of the streets surrounding the church and prevented parishioners from approaching it. The Rev. Harving Padilla, St. John’s pastor, was trapped inside with a limited food supply and without access to his medications.
One among Father Padilla’s parishioners, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that this was not the primary time police had harassed the pastor and parishioners at St. John the Baptist.
In November 2019, she said, “Sandinista and paramilitary mobs” attempted to force their way into the church during Mass. The altar servers and the people inside closed the doors and prevented the mob from entering. “My mom was amongst them. People, including children, were locked inside until the mob left,” the parishioner said.
The Nicaraguan Congress released a report accusing church figures of supporting an “attempted coup” in 2018 and recommending the prosecution of priests who supported protestors.
When protests broke out in 2018, Father Padilla “really tried to assist the youth of the resistance, those that were fighting in Masaya,” the parishioner said. “He didn’t hesitate. He gave shelter to those being persecuted by the federal government and he has been outspoken against the treatment of political prisoners.”
Father Padilla was finally in a position to leave his church escorted by a gaggle of other priests on May 24 and is now at an undisclosed location in Nicaragua.
Father Padilla’s case is only one example of the federal government’s persecution of the Catholic Church. A study “Nicaragua: A Persecuted Church?” by Martha Patricia Molina Montenegro documents 190 attacks and desecrations against church sites since 2018, including a fireplace within the cathedral of Managua, in addition to police harassment and persecution of bishops and priests by the Nicaraguan government.
In early May the Nicaraguan Congress released a report accusing church figures of supporting an “attempted coup” in 2018, which is how the Ortega-Murillo regime describes the mass peaceful protests that 12 months. The report recommends the prosecution of priests who supported protestors.
In an interview with the Nicaraguan news outlet Confidencial, Monsignor Silvio Fonseca, Vicar for the Family on the Archdiocese of Managua, said that the federal government is pressuring the church into silence, but, he added, the church in Nicaragua would proceed to denounce human rights violations.
“The persecution of the Catholic Church is an element of Ortega’s logic of repression.”
“The church cannot negotiate principles,” he told Confidencial. “The church cannot negotiate fundamentals. That’s what is at the center of the matter.”
Elvira Cuadra, director of the Center for Transdisciplinary Studies of Central America and one in all an increasing variety of Nicaraguans who’ve been forced into exile for opposing the Ortega family, believes the federal government seeks to punish the church.
“Daniel Ortega hoped to show the page with the 2021 elections, however the 81 percent [voter] absenteeism gave him little legitimacy,” Ms. Cuadra said. “To manipulate the country, he needs some modicum of legitimacy, and the Catholic Church is an actor that might give it to him. But since he doesn’t have its support, Ortega has increased the repression against it.”
“The persecution of the Catholic Church is an element of Ortega’s logic of repression,” said Manuel Orozco, the director of the Migration, Remittances, and Development Program on the Inter-American Dialogue, a U.S.-based think tank on global affairs. “He had already gone after social leaders, political parties, the private sector and civil society. Going after the church is an element of the federal government’s attempt for total control of residents.”
Silencing universities
The federal government can also be cracking down on universities. An evaluation by the media outlet Divergentes describes Nicaragua because the Latin American country suffering the worst erosion of educational freedom since 2018. Earlier this 12 months the federal government took control of eight private universities, and in February a Congress member from the Sandinista Party threatened to shut down the Jesuit-administered University of Central America in Managua, charging that it acted as a “center of terrorism [and] disinformation.”
Autonomy and academic freedom are essential points of the mental life at any university, “in order that universities can speak truth to power…so students and college can take a look at the topics they need.”
Based on one other report in Divergentes, the Ortega government has taken other steps to undermine the independence of each private and non-private universities, centralizing control over academic hiring, curriculum design and budget allocation to the National Universities Council, a government body controlled by the Sandinista Party. Universities that belong to the council are entitled to receive 6 percent of the national budget. Public universities use the funds to finance their operations, and personal universities use the funds to supply scholarships to students.
Government authorities removed the University of Central America from the National Universities Council, depriving the Jesuit university of presidency support for student tuition. The choice was widely viewed as retaliation for the university’s role in assisting students through the 2018 demonstrations.
Serena Cosgrove, faculty coordinator of Seattle University’s Central America Initiative, views the move as an try and limit free discourse in Nicaragua. Autonomy and academic freedom are essential points of the mental life at any university, she explained, “in order that universities can speak truth to power…so students and college can take a look at the topics they need.”
“Each are essential for a democratic society; they’ve been extremely limited in Nicaragua.”
Dr. Cosgrove recalled the massacre of six Jesuits and two of their collaborators on the University of Central America in El Salvador by government forces in 1989. “While you hold those in power accountable, it could bring severe consequences,” she said. “That is what the U.C.A. in El Salvador did and that’s why the federal government killed [the Jesuits] in November 1989—because their pedagogy, research and social outreach were on the service of those excluded in society, and that was seen as a threat by the federal government.”
Civil flight
In 2020 the federal government enacted laws to make sure total control of the country, including a law that criminalizes social media posts deemed hostile to the federal government and one other that makes it easy for the federal government to prosecute dissidents on charges of undermining the country’s national integrity. Based on Mr. Orozco, that level of control is driving people out of Nicaragua.
The widespread public boycott of the 2021 elections because the people’s way of protesting against the federal government since public demonstrations have been prohibited since 2018.
“The federal government has three instruments for social control: economic populism, the criminalization of democracy and the usage of violence,” Mr. Orozco said. “The result’s total impunity, which is fueling massive migration.” Greater than 250,000 people have left Nicaragua for the reason that current political crisis began in 2018.
Abel Martínez is one in all the individuals who decided to immigrate to america after harassment by the police and government sympathizers.
“I used to be a farmer in Nicaragua,” he said. “In 2018 I carried the Nicaraguan flag and joined the protests against the federal government. Before the 2021 elections, the party leaders in the neighborhood where I lived threatened my wife and me. They said they might report us to the local police if we didn’t support the federal government.
“We moved to a distinct town, but we faced the identical problem,” he said. “The police were going to arrest us because they said we were traitors to the country. We had nowhere left to cover, and that’s once we decided to go away and are available to america.”
Abigail Hernández, the Nicaraguan journalist who runs Galería News, a photojournalism and investigative media platform, also had to go away because of presidency persecution. “In Nicaragua you reside under constant anxiety,” she said. “Each day is tougher to breathe freely. You possibly can’t plan for tomorrow. The regime has hijacked the country in every possible way.
“That’s why there’s a lot migration,” Ms. Hernández said. “There isn’t a rule of law anymore in Nicaragua.”
Ms. Hernández still holds out hope for a peaceful democratic restoration in Nicaragua. She sees the widespread public boycott of the 2021 elections because the people’s way of protesting against the federal government since public demonstrations have been prohibited since 2018. “We all know in regards to the costs of a civil war,” Ms. Hernández said. “That’s the reason we’re resisting peacefully and are searching for a civic solution. We wish peace for Nicaragua.”
The commitment to peaceful resistance demonstrated by the Nicaraguan people demands a stronger response from the international community, she said, which cannot remain “indifferent” to the repression orchestrated by the Ortega-Murillo regime.