The government of President Daniel Ortega revoked the legal status of hundreds of evangelical groups as part of its crackdown on institutions that do not bow to its authority.
Frances Robles, 19 AUG 2024
The government led by President Daniel Ortega, right, and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, has cracked down on civic and religious groups. (Alfredo Zuniga/Associated Press)
The Nicaraguan government on Monday canceled the legal status of 1,500 nonprofit organizations — many of them evangelical religious groups — in the authoritarian government’s continued effort to quash people and institutions that are not allied with the government.
More than 5,000 nonprofit organizations, including church groups, have been shut down in Nicaragua since 2018. Monday’s sweep of 1,500 civic and religious groups was by far the largest in a single day.
The measure came just days after the government banished from the country two Catholic priests who had been detained earlier this month.
Monday’s decision was notable because President Daniel Ortega’s government had until now focused its ire on the Roman Catholic Church, particularly in regions where high-profile bishops and priests had spoken out against human rights abuses.
Evangelical pastors had largely stayed out of the political fray. But the elimination of hundreds of their churches on Monday shows the Ortega administration is expanding its effort to silence religious leaders and close off any independent space not affiliated with the government, said Martha Patricia Molina, a Nicaraguan lawyer who tracks attacks against churches and clergy.
“All of their properties are going to be confiscated,” said Ms. Molina, who fled Nicaragua in 2021 and now lives in Texas. “This is an attack against religious freedom.”
Mr. Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, have presided over an increasingly autocratic regime that has seen them take control over virtually all government institutions, including the legislature, courts and elections.
In 2018, hundreds of thousands of people throughout the country protested against cuts to social security and eroding democracy in a quest to topple the government, but the pair responded with a tough crackdown. Hundreds of people were killed, imprisoned or forced out of the country.
Ms. Murillo, who serves as spokeswoman for the government, did not respond to a request for comment.
Since that uprising, nearly 250 priests, nuns, bishops and other members of the Catholic church were forced out of the country, according to a report that Ms. Molina released Friday. Some of them fled, but three bishops and 136 priests were expelled.
The region of Matagalpa traditionally had around 71 priests but now just 13 remain, she said.
A Jesuit university was shut down and taken over by the government last year, and in June this year, 20 Protestant churches were slammed with unexplained exorbitant fines.
The Nicaraguan Ministry of Interior closed the organizations this week, saying they had failed to meet their legal obligations to report their finances, according to a notice published in the Nicaraguan government’s legal register.
The notice listed the 1,500 organizations, which included hundreds of small faith groups, many of them affiliated with Pentecostal and Baptist churches.
The government uses a repressive legal framework to persecute Catholic and Protestant communities through arrest, imprisonment and the seizure of property, according to a June report by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, a U.S. government commission that monitors the universal right to freedom of religion or belief abroad. Laws ostensibly meant to combat terrorism and money laundering are instead used to arbitrarily cancel the legal status and seize the property of such groups, the report said.
The government-controlled legislature passed several laws that created onerous financial reporting requirements for nonprofit organizations, making it difficult for them to comply. Even Catholic charity groups have found themselves faced with money laundering charges.
The June report by the U.S. commission said the government has engaged in increasingly repressive actions against Protestant communities. Members of the Evangelical Church and the Moravian Church were threatened, and their services were either prohibited or conspicuously monitored, the report said.
“I think that the church in Nicaragua has always been on the side of the truth,” said Félix Navarrete, a Nicaraguan lawyer and Catholic church activist who fled shortly after the 2018 uprising and is now the Hispanic ministry coordinator for the Archdiocese of Indianapolis.
“One of the government’s biggest fears is that through religious leaders, the people of Nicaragua can have change,” he said. “They are trying to avoid that at all costs.”