Friday 16 December 2022
Over the past five years in Nicaragua, violations of human rights have skyrocketed alongside aggressive government actions to eliminate critical voices and cripple independent civil society. Within this context, freedom of religion or belief has also come under attack to the degree that last month Nicaragua was added to the State Department’s list of Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) under the International Religious Freedom Act. In only a few years, the Ortega-Murillo government has managed to place Nicaragua alongside such long-term serious violators of freedom of religion or belief as China, Cuba and Eritrea.
Today there are at least 13 religious leaders in prison or under house arrest. This includes two Catholic bishops, a number of priests, lay leaders and seminarians, and at least one Protestant pastor who is being held in isolation in a punishment cell with no natural light. It is important to note that there may, in fact, be more, especially in regard to the Protestant community. The levels of fear in the country are so high that the families or communities of faith of those affected are very reticent to speak out or report these cases because of the strong likelihood that the situation of the affected person and their family or community could get even worse.
Religious leaders of all faiths are carrying out their work under the intrusive scrutiny of the government. The authorities are systematically targeting communities of faith both through the use of uniformed agents, who attend and observe and record religious activities, and the infiltration of informants who monitor and report on everything from the content of sermons and prayers to private conversations between the religious leaders and members of their community. Anything interpreted as critical of the government or its policies can result in retaliatory measures ranging from threats and acts of intimidation against the targeted religious leader to physical violence, arbitrary detention or forced expulsion from Nicaragua. While the general state of fear that exists in the country means that many practice self-censorship, for its part, the government’s paranoia has grown to the extent that a religious leader encouraging their congregation to do something as seemingly general and innocuous as to ‘pray for the situation’ in the country has been interpreted as a criticism of the authorities and in one case, resulted in threats so severe against the pastor who said this to the point that he and his wife left their church and relocated to another part of the country. Another religious leader told CSW preaching on themes of unity or justice, for example, can be considered criticism of the government and therefore treated as a crime.
In addition to imprisoning religious leaders, the government has also increasingly subjected those it considers to be problematic to forced expulsion from the country. This includes withdrawing visas or accreditation for those who hold foreign passports but has extended to denying reentry to Nicaraguan citizens who traveled abroad. In one example, on 27 September, the government refused entry to Father Guillermo Trinidad Blandón González, who leads the Santa Lucía Catholic Church in Boaco Department. The priest was prevented from boarding a flight from Miami to Nicaragua, following a visit to Israel. Entire religious orders inside the country including the Missionaries of Charity and nuns affiliated with The Cross of the Sacred Heart of Jesus have also been forced to leave the country.
Over the past year the government has become more aggressive in prohibiting public manifestations of a religious nature including outdoor worship services, for example shutting down a Protestant church outreach activity held in a public basketball court in one community and then declaring a total ban in that area of any public religious activity. Religious processions and parades, some of which have been celebrated for over a century across the county, were forcibly prevented by security forces, in some cases wearing riot gear, from taking place. This included local religious processions in honor of Saint Jude, Our Lady of Mercy and Saint Michael the Archangel as well as celebrations traditionally held across the country, for example those commemorating the Day of the Bible, observed this year on 25 September and celebrated by both Protestants and Catholics.
In another example of this, on the morning of 14 August after priests and hundreds of parishioners had gathered in a Catholic church in the South Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region (SCCAR) before holding a procession in honor of the Virgin of Fatima, police blocked all the entrances to the church. The police officers informed a priest that the church did not have permission to carry out public events and threatened him with imprisonment if he disobeyed their order to cancel the event. Members of the church who had gathered for the procession at first protested, but after they too were threatened with imprisonment they dispersed. The police stood guard around the church throughout the rest of the day, preventing the priest from leaving the building and anyone else from entering. Catholic churches in other parts of Nicaragua reported similar experiences the same day.
While the government’s attacks on religious leaders have been the most visible, rank and file members of communities of faith have also experienced violations of their freedom of religion or belief. Pro-democracy activists, human rights defenders, members of the political opposition and others that the government considers to be critical of its policies regularly reported harassment and warnings from government security forces to separate themselves from communities of faith and not to participate in religious activities. This is similar to tactics used by the Cuban government with the aim of socially isolating those it considers to be dissidents. In one case last year a member of the Constitutionalist Liberal Party was stopped on his way home after attending Sunday morning Mass. He was arbitrarily detained for a few hours by several police and military officers who, before releasing him, warned him that if they saw him at church again, he would be imprisoned or forcibly disappeared. Similarly, a woman and her husband were blocked from attending services at their Catholic church in the department of Madriz. They believe that they were targeted because the woman is the niece of a well-known anti-government figure. The police threatened both of them, on separate occasions and multiple times, that if they continued to attempt to attend church they would be imprisoned. In January 2022 and after months of daily harassment, the woman fled the country. Her husband followed one month later.
As is common in other totalitarian countries, civilians and especially government employees are expected to attend and participate in political propaganda activities held outside of work hours. The loyalty of many Nicaraguans to the government is being subjected to a litmus test in which they are forced to choose between their faith or acquiescing to the demands of the authorities to participate in a political event. In September, a woman in the SCCAR was fired from her low-level government job because she had attended a religious activity at her Pentecostal church rather than participate in a political activity. A source told CSW that this is a common dilemma for government workers at all levels.
The government’s crackdown has also extended to freedom of expression, especially in regard to independent media, and communities of faith have been affected by this as well. Over the past 13 months the only Protestant and two Catholic television channels were shut down, and at least nine radio stations, one Protestant and eight Catholic, were forced to close. The closure of the Catholic radio stations in August led to direct attacks on Catholic clergy, including the blockading by police of a priest inside his parish for four days (he subsequently went into hiding and then fled the country), followed by the blockading of Bishop Rolando Alvarez inside the curia of Matagalpa along with 11 others including priests, seminarians and a cameraman by security forces in riot gear for 15 days. On 19 August, the bishop was taken into custody and put under house arrest and seven of the men with him, including four priests, two seminarians and the cameraman were sent to the notorious maximum-security prison known as El Chipote. It probably comes as no surprise that the Nicaraguan government does not respect the UN Nelson Mandela Rules for the minimum standard treatment of prisoners and that political prisoners, which these men are all considered to be, are not permitted to receive or have a Bible or other religious literature in prison.
The space for independent civil society organizations (CSO), including religious groups, was dramatically reduced over the past 12 months. Thousands of civil society organisations (CSOs) and institutions have been arbitrarily stripped by the National Assembly of their legal status and forced to shut. These included CSOs of a religious nature or linked to a religious group or institution, and in some cases led to the confiscation of property by the government or the enforced exile of the respective members of communities of faith. These included internationally known and respected international organisations such as CAFOD, Caritas, Christian Aid and Compassion International, and domestic organisations including the Council of Missionary Churches of Christ and the Justice and Peace Commission, a Catholic CSO that provided human rights advice and some legal assistance to people of limited resources in Estelí Department. The Justice and Peace Commission was the last human rights office still operating in Estelí after the forced closure in 2018 of the Estelí branch of the Nicaraguan Centre for Human Rights (CENIDH).
The cancellation of legal status extended to institutions of higher learning. On 2 February several universities and technical institutes linked to both Roman Catholic and Protestant religious groups were stripped of their legal status. This included the Catholic University of Dry Tropic Farming and Livestock (UCATSE), the Diocese of Estelí Agriculture and Livestock Technical Institute (ITADE), the Paulo Freire University (UPF), and the Polytechnic University of Nicaragua which was affiliated with the Baptist Convention of Nicaragua. In each of these cases, the government then moved to take over the properties.
Developments in Nicaragua over the past year give great cause for concern and, sadly, the country’s addition to the State Department CPC list was well deserved. The number of human rights violations, including violations of freedom of religion or belief, continues to rise. Intrusive monitoring, surveillance and intimidation tactics are the daily reality for individuals and groups, including religious groups. The government is moving aggressively to eradicate independent civil society, following the Cuba model, from Nicaragua. Religious groups and communities of faith have been negatively affected by this, and it can be expected that this space will continue to shrink in the foreseeable future. In the same way, it is becoming clear that the government is intent on eliminating critical voices through imprisonment or forced exile, and religious leaders, including high ranking members of the Roman Catholic clergy, will not be exempt. A climate of fear is becoming increasingly entrenched, contributing to another unfavourable parallel with Cuba; like the island country, Nicaragua is also experiencing a historic wave of migration unprecedented since 1990.
Unfortunately the government shows no sign of responding positively to criticism from the international community. Its strong relationships with other notorious human rights violators including those in the region like Cuba, and outside like China, with which Nicaragua restored diplomatic relations in 2021 and has signed a free trade agreement, will probably make it even less likely to respond to pressure from the United States, European countries or bodies like the Organization of American States. The government’s efforts to supress independent civil society and stamp out critical voices show that it understands that the biggest threat to its survival comes from within. If the US hopes to see the restoration of pluralistic democracy and respect for fundamental human rights to Nicaragua we must seek creative and effective ways to support and strengthen independent civil society, including religious groups and communities of faith, both in the country and in exile, identifying ways to reinforce the links between the two group so that they can work together for positive change. It is of vital importance to the future of Nicaragua that the government is not successful in its attempts to neutralise the potential of its people through repression and intimidation in the country or by forcing them outside of it into exile.
I conclude with this call from a political leader and devout Catholic still inside the country:
The actions [the international community] take[s] must be immediate due to the situation that Nicaraguans are experiencing with the prison state in the country … personal sanctions are not enough … they must apply all international statutes to help get rid of this dynastic dictatorship because Nicaraguans are already fatigued of shedding their blood just so they will be listened to and their freedoms respected