(CP) The Nicaraguan government has canceled the legal registration of 1,500 nonprofit organizations, including churches, intensifying a years-long crackdown on this Central American nation. A notice in the federal government Gazette, La Gaceta, claimed these groups were non-compliant with financial reporting requirements spanning one to 35 years.
The notice within the Gazette, published on Monday, listed the 1,500 organizations. It includes 695 religious groups primarily related to Catholic, Evangelical and Pentecostal denominations, in keeping with CNN.
Historically, the Ortega government’s focus had been totally on the Roman Catholic Church, especially in areas where church leaders vocally opposed human rights abuses. However, the newest closures indicate a big expansion of this policy to incorporate Evangelical churches, which were previously less involved in political matters.
“All of their properties are going to be confiscated. This is an attack against religious freedom,” The New York Times quoted Martha Patricia Molina, a Nicaraguan lawyer who now resides in Texas after fleeing in 2021, as saying.
Félix Navarrete, a Nicaraguan lawyer and Catholic church activist, underlined the symbolic importance of churches within the fight for truth and alter in Nicaragua. “One of the federal government’s biggest fears is that through religious leaders, the people of Nicaragua can have change,” Navarrete was quoted as saying.
The motion is an element of a pattern under President Daniel Ortega, who secured a controversial fifth term in 2021. The ruling regime of the far-left Sandinista National Liberation Front has been marked by the suppression of opposition, with quite a few political candidates, journalists and activists arrested under ambiguous national security laws.
The closures and subsequent property seizures are ostensibly justified by the federal government’s stringent financial reporting laws, purportedly to combat terrorism and money laundering. However, these laws have been widely criticized for facilitating the persecution of spiritual communities.
A June report by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom listed increasingly repressive actions against these communities, including threats and surveillance of church services.
Seven detained Catholic priests were recently exiled to Rome. The clergy, detained by the National Police within the Diocese of Matagalpa under Bishop Rolando Álvarez — an outspoken critic of the regime — were held under house arrest and on the National Inter-Diocesan Seminary of Our Lady of Fátima before their expulsion. The exiled group includes senior diocese leaders Fathers René Vega Matamoros and Edgard Sacasa, who led the diocese following Bishop Álvarez’s earlier exile.
According to Vatican News, since October 2022, the federal government has forcibly exiled several groups of priests as tensions between the state and church escalated.
The other nonprofits which have lost their registration range from sports clubs, reminiscent of basketball and soccer teams, to varied activist groups.
The United Nations Human Rights Office, through spokesperson Liz Throssell, described these actions as “deeply alarming,” noting a big erosion of civic space and spiritual freedom in Nicaragua.
According to Nada al-Nashif, U.N. Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, since late June 2022, over 5,000 NGOs, media outlets and personal universities have seen their legal statuses revoked. Throssell said the human rights situation in Nicaragua has drawn “grave concern” from the U.N., with a minimum of 35 arrests since March aimed toward closing down civic engagement.
