This very important article explains what the government is doing to quietly get rid of civil society organizations that do not openly support the regime. Even NGOs who consider themselves supportive of the government have been surprised by the microscope they are put under to ensure that none of their board members, staff, or other associates have been critical of the government in their social media. If so, they find themselves unable to obtain the documents needed by the government to maintain their legal status and thus keep their bank accounts open.
Six months of the “Foreign Agents” law: NGOS “softly die off” in the Ministry of the Interior
By Octavio Enríquez in Confidencial, May 3, 2021
Regime turns bureaucracy into a more subtle and mortally effective method of repression. “Police patrols created bad publicity for the government”
Two lawyers, an accountant and three board members, all representatives of non- governmental organizations in Nicaragua, maintain that the regime of Daniel Ortega is “softly killing them off” with the imposition of bureaucratic laws and processes that have as their most recent barrier the Law for the Regulation of Foreign Agents, approved in mid-October 2020 in a package of punitive laws of Ortega. They thus agree that the method of repression used by the authorities has changed because these actions are “more discrete” than the raids of previous years.
If questioning the regime of Nicaragua used to place you in front of disparagement campaigns and accusations of money laundering, as happened with representatives of the Center for Communication Research (CINCO) in 2008, the fate of associations depends now on the excessive bureaucracy and control that officials exercise from two adjoining offices in the first floor of the Ministry of the Interior (MIGOB): the office for the Registry of Foreign Agents and the office for the Control of Non-Profit organizations.
Through their facebook page, the María Elena Cuadra Women´s Movement denounced that the Government since 2018 has not given them their compliance documents nor have they accepted their financial statements. In February the Permanent Human Rights Commission (CPDH) complained about obstacles in MIGOB, as the Interamerican Human Rights Commission reported on rejecting the Law for the Regulation of Foreign Agents, a law that, under the pretext of regulating foreign financing, promotes the segregation of Nicaraguans , infringing their political rights.
A costly labyrinth
For those who have gone to these offices of the Ministry, it is clear that the labyrinth for organizations begins there. A very expensive path, especially for those representatives of associations that are working in more remote areas of the country. If the organization decides to register as a “foreign agent”, for example, but does not have the proof of compliance that the other office issues, it simply cannot do it.
If the foreign agent registration office requires a document, even though the Ministry already has it in the other office, that does not matter, because it does not help facilitate the process at all. They need to submit those documents again, even though it is a duplication of effort. The orientations that each applicant receives are always verbal, and therefore, could conflict with a new response from the last official who attended them, in other words, everything depends on their discretion.
In Nicaragua NGOs are subject to the control of the Ministry of the Interior due to a legal framework formed by the recent Law for the Regulation of Foreign Agents, that sets fines of a half million dollars for those who act outside of their purposes; the law of associations and its regulations for regulating associations which have remained secret since 2019; and the regulations on money laundering, established by the Financial Analysis Unit (UAF).
What no one says publicly out of fear of reprisals, is that there is political control which both the office of foreign agents and the office of associations are fully aware of. That is why, according to those affected, in the legal office located in the second floor of the Ministry of the Interior are located the files of women´s organizations, human rights organizations and those who promote public liberties.
“Some officials have said that they will never pass certain organizations, because there are coup supports among their board members,” they maintain.
With more than 15 years of working in NGOs, another technician consulted explained that the Government designed a system where it no longer needs to send police cars to your office, and simply with an accountant and a lawyer they can intervene in your organization. Later there could be a replacement of the board, until the regime takes control of the organization, even though it may have decades of working. “Now the police cars provide bad publicity to the Government; this is different if they want to take it all away from you, they do it subtly.”
CONFIDENCIAL sent a request for information to the email of the Public Relations office of the Ministry of the interior, after several failed attempts by telephone. In neither case did they respond to questions about the situation of the legality of organizations and the hindrances imposed by the State.
A world of “Kafkian difficulties”
The state difficulties are such that the six members of civil society connected to organizations that told CONFIDENCIAL about their adventure, described the impediments as “kafkian” in reference to the Czech writer Franz Kafka and the tragically absurd character of some situations proposed in his literary work.
Those interviewed explained that the common objective of the state authorities is to keep them in a state of illegality in this electoral year, which directly affects the possibility that they can maintain their accounts in the banking sector and in that way receive external financing with intromissions that even get to the point of proposing reforms in their statutes.
“For example, if they do not like how we are making decisions, they order us to change the way we do it. This violates freedom of organization and also interferes in what was previously approved (legal status) by another branch of the state: the National Assembly. Likewise, I have to pay an accountant practically to comply with the whims of the officials,”, they explained.
Rosario Sáenz, an environmentalist with a thirty-year history in the field, says that the last time that one of her delegates went to request a certificate for the Nicaraguan Foundation for Sustainable Development (FUNDENIC) where she is the Vice President, they told him they could not accept that the members of the board had met virtually, in spite of the fact that the organization gave proof of the session.
“We have gone like five times since 2018 and they do not give us our certificate of compliance. They do not provide arguments, there is no response, and the last thing that they told us was that they were not going to accept the documents because some of the members of the Foundation were outside the country, and so they did not permit that they had a virtual presence. When today even resolutions of the United Nations are done in this way. The First Lady (also) issues resolutions in this way,” criticized Sáenz, referring to the fact that different institutions do that in the context of the pandemic.
According to Sáenz, in the institutional labyrinth the other documents that organizations need to operate are in process of expiring: authorization of the Board of Directors and the General Assembly of members, the RUC or tax number. These state obstacles further compound the situation for the Foundation and other organizations, causing “stress” on their members and in some cases end with their closure, she lamented.
The President of FUNDENIC, founded in 1995, is Dr Jaime Incer Barquero, a National Geographic Award winner, one of the most well-known scientists in Nicaragua, and a presidential advisor since 2007, which seems not to matter to the Sandinista leadership. Sáenz explained that the Executive has maintained a contradictory position with Incer, because on the one hand they keep him as an advisor, but do not listen to his advice and keep FUNDENIC in a state of illegality.
“One day you show up with your organization, here there is something that you are missing, but that requirement does not show up anywhere, you meet it, you show up again and they pull out other requirements,” insisted Sáenz. To confound representatives of NGOs, the Government introduced regulations for the Law of Associations in 2020, saying that they had been written a year before, even though they had not released them.
In spite of the fact that the state impediments can vary as was confirmed, CONFIDENCIAL identified the most frequent reasons provided by the authorities of the Ministry of the Interior for not providing the certificates of compliance. A journalistic team reviewed the files of two of the organizations consulted about their procedures with the state institution, one of the associations had to go 15 times to try to obtain it, while the other had to go 20 times. Neither of them in the end obtained the certification.
- The file is being digitalized (one of the NGOs spent 2019 and 2020 in this situation)
- Request for information in EXCEL about the donations received certified by an Authorized Public Accountant, which should include the beneficiaries
- Pointing out inconsistency in the financial statements retroactively (in other words, prior to the approval of the regulations of 2019) and, in spite of the fact that they were even approved at that time by the same authorities.
- At the end of February, when the delivery of the financial reports was due, many representatives had to go out at 2am to comply with the delivery of their reports. One source said that it looked like “a Persian market”.
- The documentation was not accepted because the neighborhood was not specified where the activity of the organization took place.
- There is also arbitrary treatment with the length of the certificates. According to the sources consulted, before 2018 they were valid for one year, afterwards it was reduced to six months, and now they grant them with two terms: three months (for those who register as foreign agents) and one month for those who are not obligated to do so,
- Those who are able to register as foreign agents are obliged to pay US$50 for each transfer (donation). According to the Ministry, they need to report about transfers 5 working days before and five working days after each transfer.
“Civic death” of the organization
The consequences for those affected are clear. “They keep you in continuous civic death. For me it is State terrorism,” stated a jurist who represents twelve organizations, including local, foreign organizations and foundations that are practically “in limbo” after the series of obstacles presented by the authorities.
The lawyer said that the officials who deal with these cases in the Ministry are only five, and that since they have communication between their two offices, it is normal that at one moment the same employees are dealing with applicants in one office and in another moment applicants in the other office. They dress in blue and white, and only propaganda of the regime is visible in the office in the murals or television channels which are always tuned to the official media.
On several occasions the lawyer asked if one of her organizations, defined as religious, should register as a “foreign agent”, given that it is one of the exceptions in the law. At first they told her no, and when she informed them that it would receive funds, they changed their mind, defining religion as “reading the Bible, shouting within four walls (understood as the church),” and of course, that did not include social works.
The same jurist, got up during the conversation with the journalists and wrote on a piece of paper the word “literal”. She says that during a visit in January to the Ministry of the Interior the officials directed them that in the document of another association of hers that word was missing when they quoted article 27 and a “f”. Having solved the problem, she arrived again later on to turn in the same document. This time the woman asked her a question about one of the members of the board, who had resigned.
“Is this person going to maintain their membership?”, they asked her.
“There in the document you have the list of all the members, and he is there.”
“It is not clear to me, bring the document back again and make that clear,” they told her.
The demands of the officials are as varied as one´s imagination, and repeatedly interfere in the life of organizations. “They force you to use the official minutes book of your organization as it if were a notarial record. This means that, if there are blemishes, inadequate separations between official notes, you need to get another book. They fine you for its inappropriate use and you need to wait several days for them to give you the new one signed and sealed. That is an additional cost,” she narrated.
Escalation against the freedom of expression
The measures of the Ministry of the Interior form part of an escalation of the State against civil society organizations, after the fact that at the end of 2018 the Executive ordered the confiscation of the installations of nine organizations, who they accused of supporting the “coup”, as the Government officially refers to the protests of 2018 that were violently repressed, leaving 323 killed, according to the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).
At the end of 2018, Luis Cañas, Vice Minister of the Interior, justified the closing of the above- mentioned institutions, “They were acting against the principles that they were (called) to carry out: activities outside the law, disturbance of public order, and carrying out activities that were not in accordance with their purposes and objectives for which that legal status was granted,” he said to the official media.
Amaru Ruíz, president of the Fundación del Río, one of the organizations confiscated by the Government ion 2018, maintains that during the regime of Ortega the worst actions have been taken against associative organizations.
“Our members were 22, add to that some 20 more, they were left without the two community radios that covered El Castillo and the zone of San Carlos (in Rio San Juan), 22 properties were expropriated, including four forest conservation areas, where we have had a 30-year working presence,” explained Ruiz.
At the beginning of February 2021, after the approval of the Law for the Regulation of Foreign Agents, the Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation (FVBCH) and PEN Nicaragua described the authoritarian character of the Ortega regime. “Today is a day of civic mourning for civil society organizations that do not accept being foreign agents in our own country,” stated Cristiana Chamorro, from the FVBCH. PEN Nicaragua is represented by the poet Gioconda Belli, who stated that the bank account was cancelled as a consequence of that same legislation.
For Rosario Sáenz of FUNDENIC, what has occurred is due to a state policy of dismantling citizen participation in all State entities, to replace it with partisan participation. She coincides with Amaru Ruiz on this, co-author of an analysis of the freedom of association in Nicaragua between 2007 and 2020, published by Popol Na and the Fundación del Río at the end of last year.
“The strategy of the FSLN was that it began to try to control (aid) funds. It provided continuity to (former president Arnoldo) Alemán. The order of Valdrack Jaenstchke (then Vice Foreign Minister of Ortega) was that financing could not be provided for those issues, human rights, for example, and that all aid had to pass through the State,” explained Ruiz.
While that was happening, the FSLN kept up the persecution of social movements like feminists, the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights, the Leadership Institute of the Segovias, the Center for Information and Consultancy Services on Health, the Institute for Democracy and Development (IPADE), among others, as well as the self-convened movement of Ocupa INSS, the Peasant Movement, as well as the pressure on international organizations like the United Nations Program for Development (UNDP), expelled in 2016, as described in the analysis of Popol Na and Fundación del Río.
The consequences of the partisan control of institutions, in addition to the human rights abuses, was the lack of generalized transparency. “What you see is secrecy in everything. The only valid information is what the Government decides to provide,” added the environmentalist Rosario Sáenz.
The persecution of Daniel Ortega of NGOs in Nicaragua
Daniel Ortega has implemented a relentless campaign against organizations that he considers as his enemies: police intervention of their offices, expulsions of civil society representatives, illegal searches and confiscations.
October 10, 2008: Illegal raid of the offices of the Autonomous Women´s Movement and the Center for Communication Research (CINCO) in Managua. They were falsely accused of triangulating funds and money laundering.
November 26, 2018: The Government expelled from the country the director of the Center for Information and Consultancy Services on Health (CISAS), Ana Quirós, who has had Nicaraguan nationality since 1997. Quirós had participated in the demonstrations against the reform of Social Security in April 2018, where she was attacked by Sandinista Front mobs.
October 12, 2018: the regulations of the Financial Analysis Unit law (UAF) are published, that allow for the regulation of non-governmental organizations.
December 12, 2018: Sandinista legislators cancel the legal status of the Leadership Institute of the Segovias, the Institute for Democracy and Development (IPADE), the Fundación del Río, CINCO and Popal Na. Days before they also canceled the legal status of CISAS, the Institute for Strategic and Public Policy Studies (IEEPP), the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (CENIDH) and Hagamos Democracia.
December 24, 2018: The regime takes over manu militari the installations of the NGOs cancelled. In addition, it raids and takes over the installations of CONFIDENCIAL and Este Semana without any legal argument.
February 5, 2020: The application is denounced of a new regulation of Law 147, in effect since 2019, whose objective is to prevent the asset laundering, but in reality it is an instrument of control over organizations. Article 30, subsection 7, explains that there is reason to intervene in an organization when “it intervenes in issues of a partisan political nature in the country.”
October 19, 2020: Approval of the Law for the Regulation of Foreign Agents, supposedly to regulate external financing. Monthly controls over funds are established and the approval of funds on the part of the authorities. They denounce that the law segregates Nicaraguans and violates their political rights.
December 23, 2020: Signs appear where it is said that properties belong to the Ministry of Health, beginning the consummation of the confiscation by the State of assets of non-governmental organizations and communications media. MINSA “inaugurated” the supposed centers in February 2021.
February 5, 2021: PEN Nicaragua announces the closing of their operations because of the imposition of requirements to receive funds from outside the country with the Law for the Regulation of Foreign Agents.
February 6, 2021: The Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation announced the closure of their operations and reject the imposition of the Law for the Regulation of Foreign Agents.