Dictatorship cancels 50 more civil society organizations
By Divergentes, May 4, 2022
The Ortega-Murillo regime eliminated the legal status of 50 entities, for a total of 211 now closed down. Fundación 10, the property of Channel 10; La Corriente Feminista, an NGO that works on gender issues, and the organization of the scientist Jaime Incer Barquero were decapitated. “A society that is controlled by the State and that cannot freely manage itself nor express itself nor intervene in the public space is a society that is impoverished,” said the feminist María Teresa Blandón.
The regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo this Wednesday eliminated another 50 civil society organizations, for a total of now 211 eliminated. The hunting down of NGOs now included the closing of Fundación 10 (of the popular TV channel of the same name), La Corriente Feminista, and the Central American Women´s Fund (FCAM) and Fundenic SOS, of the scientist Jaime Incer Barquero, who served as an advisor to the Presidency on environmental issues.
The elimination was done from the National Assembly dominated by government supporters, with 75 votes in favor and 16 abstentions. “They have fallen into non-compliance by not reporting financial statements in accordance with fiscal periods, with detailed breakdowns, income, expenses, trial balance, details of donations, origin, provenance and final beneficiary”, the official document argues, as always.
For María Teresa Blandón, sociologist and director of La Corriente Feminista, the closing of the organizations forms part of “a campaign to crush all forms of organization of civil society.” “A society controlled by the State and that cannot freely manage itself nor express itself, nor intervene in the public space is a society that is impoverished,” added the feminist.
Other organizations closed down are the Central American Historical Institute Civil Association, located on the campus of the Central American University (UCA) and part of the Society of Jesus, the Women´s Movement of Chinandega and the Nicaraguan Resistance Democratic Force Movement.
The government legislators said that they closed these organizations “so that they would not continue deceiving the Nicaraguan population.” This was the principal argument. “Today we are eliminating legal statuses on this special data, these closings that for the first time the quantity of 50 associations who do not want to follow the law, who want to violate the law against money laundering,” said the Sandinista deputy Filiberto Rodríguez, who has emerged as the executioner of NGOs.
The persecution of the Ortega and Murillo regime against freedom of association has gotten worse since the protests of April 2018, and has now turned into a complete offensive against think tanks and associations for social advocacy. Nevertheless, in recent months organizations without any political connection have also been affected, like the case of Operation Smile, the Association for the Development of Solentiname, or the Luisa Mercado Foundation of writer Sergio Ramírez.
“Suppressing these organizations and confiscating their assets clearly is an attempt to silence civil society and do away with all expressions of freedom and democracy that this type of organizations have been carrying out,” said the writer on learning about the closing.
According to an analysis done by the Fundación del Río and Popol Na, which denounces the prohibition of the freedom of association in Nicaragua, more than a 1,000 organizations are a target of the dictatorship.
This Tuesday´s decree, which eliminated the legal status of 50 more organizations, was approved with 75 votes in favor coming from the Sandinista deputies.
Another one of the entities closed down this year was the Permanent Human Rights Commission (CPDH), which operated as an independent organization in defense of human rights. In fact, it was the only body that still operated in the country, in the face of the confiscation of the Nicaraguan Human Rights Center (CENIDH) at the end of 2018. Lawyers and human rights defenders of the CPDH have been persecuted by the dictatorship. The most recent case is that of María Oviedo, a defender of political prisoners who has been sentenced by the regime to eight years in jail for “attacking national sovereignty and propagating false news.”
“There is no will on the part of the Government that there be human rights organizations, that we be documenting the abuses that are committed in this country,” pointed out the executive secretary of the CPDH, Marcos Carmona, who had to go into exile out of fear of persecution against him.