More than 20 Nicaraguans were kidnapped by the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega during the first ten days of April; most of them occurred during Holy Week, a period in which the dictatorship prohibited processions and religious celebrations in the streets.
The persecution against the Catholic Church translated into greater intimidation, threats and police siege against parishes in almost the entire national territory, confirmed the organization Urnas Abiertas, which fears that this situation will worsen as the fifth anniversary of the Civic Rebellion approaches. of 2018, on April 18, 2023.
Every year, since the social outbreak of the civic struggle in 2018, the Ortega regime intensifies the persecution and siege against opponents, those released from prison, local leaders or anyone who had any connection to the civic protests five years ago.
However, in 2023, the policy of terror imposed by Orteguismo focused on the Catholic Church, and proof of this is that a large part of those imprisoned have some relationship with the religious institution, points out Ivania Álvarez, a member of Urnas Abiertas and who It has monitored the detentions, which it describes as “illegal and arbitrary.”
The leaders within the Church “are the target of the dictatorship,” says Álvarez, who assures that in previous years, the victims of threats and imprisonment were more diverse -organized civil society, opponents, union or sectoral leaders-. The regime focused its interest on the Church because it is the last remnant of resistance, recognized as a safe space for the parishioners, who exercised their right to express themselves through faith, considers the activist.
The Ortega Police prohibited prison Via Crucis processions from mid-February 2023 and then extended the restriction to any expression of popular piety, which meant a severe blow to the Nicaraguan Catholic parishioner, accustomed to living Holy Week with multiple acts of religion in the streets.
The priests complied with the order and canceled national pilgrimages prior to Holy Week, such as that of Our Lord of Esquipulas or the Black Christ, in El Sauce, León. They asked the faithful to submit to the new conditions, pray and strengthen their faith. They oriented that all the religious acts during the Greater Week would be carried out inside the temples and avoided pronouncing directly on the frontal attacks of the Ortega regime against the Church. However, that was not enough for the regime to impose its repressive state on the outskirts of several parishes in the country.
The objective was clear: to block any act of popular religiosity
Dozens of faithful rebelled against the police ban and challenged them in Nindiri, Nandaime, Chinandega and other departments, in which young people dressed in tunics and carrying crosses tried to recreate the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus. The persecution against the faithful ended in four captures in Nindirí and two people in Nandaime.
“It’s like the Police want to give an example or a sample of what is going to happen to everyone who decides to fail to comply with the authoritarian and arbitrary orders that they are imposing in the country,” says researcher Martha Patricia Molina, who in 2022 it registered 160 attacks by the regime against the Church.
“This 2023 the dictatorship began on January 1, very aggressively, with more frontal attacks. Only in Holy Week I have registered the prohibition and suspension of more than 3,176 processions, a very significant number of attacks, considering that each diocese has its own processions each of the days of Holy Week,” said the researcher.
The Ortega regime sharpened the repression imposed against the Church since Holy Thursday, when it directed that no parish could carry out a procession around the temple, as they had been doing in some areas of the country. In this way, the traditional procession of Via Crucis and the Holy Burial were carried out within the parishes, with the massive presence of Catholic faithful.
Open Polls reported acts of intimidation of churches in the north, center and Caribbean of the country, noting that in some extreme cases, the Police stationed patrol cars outside the parishes, and in a “vulgar way” the siren sounded.
Ortega’s extremism grows in April
Five years after the outbreak of civic protests, repressed with blood and fire by the Ortega dictatorship, leaving 355 fatalities according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), more than 500,000 exiles and the imposition of a de facto police state , the regime “April (of 2018) shakes them, it continues to worry them,” says Gonzalo Carrión, a member of the Nicaragua Nunca Más Human Rights Collective.
“These captures are the expression of a war against the Catholic Church and it is the nature of tyranny”, which prescribes “prison, exile and cemetery”. From the perspective of Carrión, who has been directly attacked by Ortega, making him “stateless” for defending human rights, the regime cannot stop the repression because it is the only way in which they maintain themselves in power. “They are making use of a terror machine.” These captures are that expression of a war against the Catholic Church and it is the nature of tyranny,” said the defender.
The report of the Group of Experts on Human Rights on Nicaragua (GHREN), determined that Ortega and Murillo commanded the execution of crimes against humanity since 2018 till the date. The experts called on the international community to activate universal justice to stop human rights violations and provide individual justice.
Álvarez explains that in these arrests the regime “has not forgiven” or its own people, since some of the detainees are affiliated with the Sandinista Front. From this it can be deduced that anyone can be a victim of repression. The opponent emphasizes that these arrests have no legal basis and have been characterized as violent.
“The persecution is complete against those who oppose the regime and are exercising some kind of leadership from faith,” he says.
Ortega attacked the Church since mid-2022, imprisoning more than a dozen religious, among them, Monsignor Rolando Álvarez, sentenced to 26 years in prison by the Ortega justice, after refusing to be exiled last February.
It has shut down Catholic media outlets, expelled priests and nuns, and finally unilaterally suspended diplomatic relations with the Holy See, after Pope Francis compared the Ortega regime to a Hitler dictatorship.
The experts consulted do not rule out a more repressive escalation against the Church, through the closure of Catholic temples or greater control of those who attend the masses, which have been monitored for months by operators of the Sandinista Front.
For opponent Juan Diego Barberana, Ortega’s persecution of the Church seeks to maintain control over the public and social space in the framework of the fifth anniversary of the civic protests, and thus avoid possible actions of resistance.
“What it intends to prevent is that citizens also manage to focus their disagreements against the same regime through religious activities, taking into account that the Catholic Church is on the side of truth and justice, and has established a political position in these five years,” he said.
Uncertainty for political prisoners
Until March, the Ortega regime had 36 political prisoners, according to the Mechanism for the Recognition of Political Prisoners in Nicaragua. The legal situation of the more than 20 new prisoners in these first days of April 2023 is unknown, since their families have not been able to speak with them and the reasons for their arrests have not been made public.
Álvarez hopes that they can be released, as has already happened with other Catholic laymen, victims of express arrests. This is because most of the kidnappings occurred in the context of Holy Week and it makes no sense to apply the repressive laws that the Ortega justice has used to open legal cases against opposition citizens, considered “traitors to the homeland.”
Families are also fearful and hopeful that they will soon be free. These are the cases that are publicly known, since some names have been kept in reserve at the request of their relatives:
- The young Anielka García, originally from Chichigalpa, Chinandega
- José Ángel Cerrato García, recognized opponent of Nindirí, Masaya
- Three young people who protested against the police prohibition that the tradition of Los Cirineos not come out, in Nindirí, Masaya
- The former politician, Olesia Muñoz
- Student leader, Jasson Noel Salazar Rugama
- Víctor Ticay, journalist for channel 10,
- Cándido Sánchez López, Luis José Ruiz Sánchez and a third person, all members of the Ciudadanos por la Libertad (CxL) party
- Jimmy Bonilla and Enmanuel Gutiérrez, originally from Nandaime
- Abdul Montoya, released from political prison.
- Juan Bruno Centeno Espinoza, originally from El Jocote, Somoto