This is another serious violation of the constitution and international law on the part of the dictatorship against its own citizens which is ignored in the arguments of those who defend the legitimacy of the regime.
Country Arrest: This is how the Ortega regime confiscates Nicaraguans´ passports
In DIVERGENTES, Dec 6, 2022
The regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo is blocking its critics from leaving Nicaragua and even their own public functionaries through the powers of the General Office on Migration and Foreign Nationals. DIVERGENTES and the Regional Editors reveal how a chain of command operates which has created “lists” of those identified as opponents, whose passports they confiscate at the borders, or when they try to renew their documents. Nicaraguans who are outside the country, now exiled, are prohibited from returning to their own country.
On the morning of November 7, 2021 Mons. Silvio Fonseca, one of the most critical voices of the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, arrived at the Augusto C. Sandino airport in Managua to travel to the United States, where he would do some medical checkup and visit relatives and friends. At that time, he had already said that the Nicaraguan leaders “have created themselves a God in accordance with their perversities” or that “the evil empire rules in Nicaragua,” and more than 100 attacks against the Church had been recorded, but up until that Sunday he had never had problems leaving the country.
When he got to passport control, recalls Fonseca, an official of Migration said to him that “his passport is wet, it is not working”, while he indicated to him with a gesture that the document was not being “read” by the computer. Mons. Fonseca missed his flight and Migration kept his passport with the promise that it would be returned, renewed the next day in the central offices. “I am still waiting for them to call me to give me my passport,” he says with an ironic smile, one year after the confiscation of his document.
In reality, Mons. Fonseca was facing a link in a chain thought up by the government of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo to turn Nicaragua into “country arrest” for their critics and even their own public functionaries through the powers of the General Office of Migration and Foreign Nationals. The mechanism consists in limiting arrivals and departures from the country at all the borders, cancelling and not renewing passports, exiling, blocking entry and expelling foreigners.
DIVERGENTES and the Regional Editors in the last three months counted 47 cases of passport retention, non-renovation, impediment to enter the country for nationals and foreigners, exile and expulsion of foreigners. Two of the cases of passport confiscation occurred against journalists of DIVERGENTES, and in other cases, the confirmed impacts were on collectives, like the expulsion of 18 nuns from the Mother Theresa of Calcutta Order which happened in July 2022.
The Mesoamerican Initiative of Women Human Rights Defenders (IM-Defenders), a collective that monitors violence against female human rights defenders in the region, counted 140 cases of migratory restrictions, according to a count done up to October 13, 2022. This group did a preliminary mapping, with territorial networks and organization, to provide that figure, among which they highlight that 16 defenders were exiled from the country. It is an underrepresentation of the reality because they only make some cases public due to the fear that the regime imposes on its critics and their relatives.
The mechanism of political control is more effective in the Augusto C. Sandino airport, the principal international port of the country, according to sources in Migration. The migratory agents receive 72 hours in advance updated lists of passengers with “alerts to report” on the part of the Ministry of the Interior. The lists are requested in advance of the airlines, even though the agents also track the information of the passengers who land or take off from Managua. They are a dozen officials who compose three groups of the Department of Migratory Dispatch and Control, who are younger than 35 years old and have computer knowledge, use of search engines and social networks. Any data, publication in social networks or link that they “think is suspicious” is enough to result in a passenger record and to consider that person not apt to enter or leave the country, or to take away the passport of the traveler if they are a national.
The functionaries were trained in “new technologies” after the massive social protests of 2018, when opponents traveled outside the country to do lobbying against Ortega-Murillo. At that time it was a routine control mechanism. Nevertheless, after the desertion in 2019 of Magistrate Rafael Solís, a fundamental figure of the regime and best man for the wedding of the presidential couple, who left for Costa Rica, the mechanism began to be applied to block the arrival and departure of those considered “opponents” or possible deserters of the regime, according to sources in Migration. This is the case of Magistrate Alba Luz Ramos, president of the Supreme Court (CSJ), on whom was placed a travel ban, and has only been able to leave the country on two occasions, both for medical reasons, and later by a written authorization from Daniel Ortega.
By the time Mons. Fonseca arrived at the airport the wheels were well greased. The day after they took his passport away, he showed up at the office of Migration to pick it up, as they had indicated in the airport. He was received, he says, by the Assistant Director of Migration, Pablo Morales, to whom he gave a medical document that validated the reason for the trip: to treat a neurological crisis that he has suffered for some years. Since that time, every time that he goes to Migration – two to three times a month- to ask about his passport, he receives the same response: “It is under review, and we are going to call you on the phone when it is ready.”
The call never comes. Before being expelled last March, the nuncio Waldemar Sommertag wrote to the Vice Minister of the Interior, Luis Cañas, to ask him to give the passport back to the priest. Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes also interceded for him. They did not receive responses either. “Until they give me back my passport, I feel like I am under country arrest,” says Fonseca, from his parish in Managua. He is the first priest that Ortega has confined in the country. In recent months, others have been confined to their own parishes, guarded by police barricades. “The problem is that there are no institutions where you can go when these things happen, you are left with your hands tied,” says the priest.
Checkpoint I: Comandante Acevedo, Luis Cañas and the presidential couple.
The architect who has turned Nicaragua into a large jail for those identified as opponents or dissidents is Luis Cañas, the Vice Minister of the Interior, according to sources of Migration and emails to which DIVERGENTES and the Regional Editors had access, where public officials ask him for permission to travel, and he signs them as the “link”, in other words, a direct channel with the impenetrable presidency of Ortega-Murillo.
Cañas is one of the most trusted people of the presidential couple, he de facto controls Migration and the Ministry of Foreign Relations along with the also Vice Minister Arlette Marenco. Both have a network of informants to watch over diplomats and government figures, above all after some desertions of government officials. Removed from the National Police in 2007 after being linked to cases of corruption, Cañas has vast experience in police intelligence, a skill that he puts in practice in his current civil career, to the point that State workers consulted for this report fear him. “Luis Cañas has put together an intelligence networks in institutions. When he speaks, it is like Rosario Murillo speaking,” says a former worker in the Foreign Ministry.
The same sources from Migration and others from the Foreign Ministry point to Cañas as the executor of the massive cancelation of NGOs in the country, and the person who sends the updated lists to the airport of the “figures to report.” They are communicated to Comandante Edgar Gerardo Acevedo Cruz, Border Director. Acevedo can order who arrives and leaves, but if there is a doubt, they are sent to Cañas. The Vice Minister has the discretion to decide, but on occasions only serves as “the link” to consult with Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo about what decision to make.
Sources in Migration state that this chain of “approval” does not happen with all passengers, but just the “figures” that they consider of “greater relevance.” For example, in September 2019 Migration and Foreign Nationals asked the managers of airlines with access to the connection in Managua to deny entry to Nicaraguan territory to a high-level commission of the Organization of American States (OAS), sent by the secretary of that body, Luis Almagro. Thanks to this mechanism the presidential candidate Arturo Cruz was also detained by the Police on June 5, 2021, when he was returning from a trip through the United States. The former ambassador of Nicaragua in Washington violated, the Police alleged, the Law for the Defense of the Rights of the People to Independence, Sovereignty and Self Determination for Peace.
Sources in Migration agree that the mechanism began when they wanted to control information from the airlines. The first target was Delta, due to the fact that it connected Managua with Washington, the capital where “the coup supporters traveled to ask for sanctions.”
“The first thing that they did – says a former worker of Delta – was “recruit” some workers of us who were Ground Security Coordinators (GSC). That is a post where the security staff of the airport were trained, focused on the security of the plane, possible kidnappings during the flight, warning signs about possible people who could jeopardize security.”
There was an attempt to get an official version from Delta Airline by email, but there was no response, the airline closed operations in Nicaragua in May 2020.
The GSC have access to the SELECTEE list, an exclusive record of the airlines. This list has information related to the form of payment for a ticket. To give an example: if the passenger buys a ticket in cash that same day that they are traveling it triggers an alert in the system and that passenger will be placed on that list. Another reason to get on that list is by name, because maybe it is a “wanted “ person who has to be identified before boarding the flight. “People are placed on that list based on their behavior during check in, but they cannot put a person on that list based on their religion, ethnic group or political preference,” said the source.
In spite of the fact that the SELECTEE list was given to airport workers, the Migration Office would demand a prior filter for all passengers. One that would include their visiting address, date of return, among other personal data. Thus was born the creation of a list of passengers that the airline operators had to send 72 hours before the flight. This provided a time frame to be able to check them and decide about their arrival or departure.
In the beginning departures from the country were only denied for the opposition. Later, Migration began to confiscate and revoke passports…to refine the mechanism. It was at that moment that the links of the chain were established with their respective directors.
María Josefine “Pinitia” Gurdián, the mother of the political prisoner, Ana Margarita Vijil, wanted to travel to Costa Rica on September 2, 2021. Pinita was going to undergo an exam for the cancer that she has had since 2019, accompanied by two of her children. “On arriving at Peñas Blancas (southern border), an official from Migration got on the bus and went over a list of all of us who were on the bus. When he got to where we were he asked us “did you give me your passports?” no one else had asked for it,” Pinita related. Then they were told that they could not continue the journey. When they asked the Migration official the reasons for the retentions, he responded, “They are orders from above.”
Meanwhile, in the Managua airport, the Department of Dispatch and Migratory Control has to verify a daily average of 2,708 people who arrive and leave the country. These migration officials do basic searches in Google and on Facebook profiles to get information about each one of the passengers. Screen shots, links and downloads are the elements that are attached on a WORD sheet which is shared with the director on shift.
There are occasions when the passports are retained in an arbitrary manner. The Onda Local journalist, Julio López, denounced that in the border control of Peñas Blancas, immigration officials took his passport away because he had a “travel ban.” “There was an asterisk by my name on the passenger list. On asking me my seat number one of the officials said, `this is Julito!´and they isolated me, “ said López, who days later left through a blind spot and is exiled in Costa Rica.
Order to airline managers to not allow OAS team to board flights to Nicaragua, Sept 2019
Checkpoint II We are going to punch your passport
Vladimir Vásquez still recalls with “horror” his encounter with a migration official in September 2021. When he was trying to leave the country for the United States, he was asked whether he published against the government on social networks. Vásquez is a journalist with 15 years of experience in different independent media, among them the daily newspaper La Prensa and Confidencial, both media outlets persecuted and their installations confiscated by the regime. With a cell phone he was shown his Twitter profile and he was chastised, “Is that you?” Minutes later he was told the words that Vásquez cannot forget: “you are not going to travel”, “your passport is going to remain revoked and you are under a travel ban.”
Vásques left the airport nervous and frightened. He did not know what would happen later. “I thought that maybe they would follow me, detain me and stick me in `El Chipote ´, the cells in the Office of Judicial Support where the dictatorship has jailed some forty political prisoners since the end of May,” he wrote in an opinion article in Confidencial in November 2021, his birthday.
Vásquez wanted to leave but was not able to at that time. In Nicaragua he was not sleeping nor eating in peace without feeling persecuted, so it is that he sold “everything that he had acquired with so much effort during years of work “… Without a passport, within days he crossed into Costa Rica through blind spots. He had neither documents nor baggage, because they had remained in the airport when he was verified by the airlines, before passing through immigration. He only arrived with the clothing that he had on his back. “In the backpack, which I was carrying nearly empty, I still felt the weight of my fears: that they would pursue me, jail me. That fear travels with you,” he relates.
One of the first cases of suspended passports which was made public was that of Kitty Monterrey, the president of the Citizens for Liberty Party (CxL). The authorities suspended it on August 8, 2021, as part of a series of repressive measures against contenders for the presidential elections of last year. In that case, the Ministry of the Interior tried to justify it saying that the 71-year-old political leader was also a US citizen, had 198 trips recorded, and “in a minority of them she did it with a Nicaraguan passport.” Four days later, Monterrey fled to Costa Rica. “It did not make sense (to stay in Nicaragua), because one of two things would happen: they would either arrest me or deport me, so why stay?”, she said.
One year later, in the middle of 2022, the system no longer just blocked the departures of those “on the list” at the borders. The new modality is to not renew and confiscate passports in Migration. A journalist – who identity is omitted – said that they took away his passport when he tried to renew it because it was going to expire soon. “We are going to punch (annul) your old passport,” an official from Migration told him with the promise that he would be given the new one within eight working days. When he arrived to pick it up, an official told him that the passport had not arrived yet because “there was a problem with the bar code readers, which is why the scanners are not reading it.” They asked for his telephone number and promised to call him when it was ready. This happened on June 23rd. The journalist continued “waiting for the call”, until he decided to flee the country through blind spots this past July, when the Police raided his home after doing a story.
Since the middle of 2022 the only safe option that those who are persecuted have for leaving the country are through blind spots. On July 21 the newspaper La Prensa announced that it had removed all its personnel from the country because of the pursuit of the regime against them. In the publication La Prensa denounced that “even though all the people left the country irregularly due to the fear of being arrested at the borders, several had to flee without taking their passports with them or taking only expired documents, because for months now the regime has refused to renew the travel documents of journalists from independent media.”
The non-renewal of passports also crosses borders. Different citizens have denounced that Nicaraguan consulates are refusing to renew the passports of those in exile. The former Sandinista guerrilla, Mónica Baltodano, said that “they denied the renewal of our passports,” referring to herself, her husband, Julio López and her son Umanzor Campos Baltodano. Baltodano said that “they told us that `by instructions of Migration in Managua we needed to do the process in Nicaragua´ when they knew that we are in exile.”
Vice Minister Luis Cañas is also who decides, from Nicaragua, whose passport will be renewed outside the country. Nevertheless, the amount of information and work that this spying implies means that sometimes there are mistakes, states a source from the Foreign Ministry. “For example, in Miami they make 100 passports a day, because it is one of the few consulates that has a machine to make passports. So, some passports are given out because Luis Cañas is not able to see the list of those approved. The demand is too great, but he does have a very strict control,” he says.
The practice, experts denounce, is a violation of the Constitution of Nicaragua and human rights. “The confiscation of passports, forced migration and the impediment to returning to your country constitute other human rights violations. Without a doubt, leaving people in a documentation void”, stated the political analyst and expert in international relations, Pedro Fonseca. “Certainly banishment and expulsion is not a specific case of these situations. It is a process that forms part of every authoritarian regime, “he added.
In addition to banishment, the regime has deported citizens with double nationalities, like the case of the academic Ana Quirós, who was born in Costa Rica and lived in Nicaragua since the age of 15. Another similar case was that of Salvador Espinoza and Xóchilt Tapia, producers of SaXo, a company that was responsible for administering Nicaraguan bands. They were arrested by the National Police after raiding their home in Managua. In a period of 48 hours they were released under the condition that they leave the country. The pair of musicians had to go into exile in Germany, a country where they have begun the asylum process.
A new modality of the regime consists in reserving the right to admission of foreign citizens. Such was the case of the Guatemalan journalist and columnist Irma Alicia Velásquez, who was detained for hours by the authorities of Migration of Nicaragua, to later be deported to Panama. “They arrested me on leaving the plane and took everything from me,” she said.
Sons and daughters of opponents similarly punished
The repression promoted by Migration even affects many sons and daughters whose parents are considered opposition figures by the Ortega-Murillo regime. There are several cases of sons and daughters of journalists, human rights defenders and opponents, who have been denied exit visas and the renewal of their passports without a justifiable reason.
Dr. Yonarqui Martínez, lawyer and human rights defender, denounced that she did all the paperwork to get exit visas for two of her smaller children, but instead they confiscated their passports and told her that “they were not authorized to leave the country.” Because of the insistence of her husband, days later they gave them back their passports, but without the exit visas.
The General Law for Immigration and Foreign Nationals in its article 95 states that all Nicaraguans under the age of 18 who travel outside the national territory must be given an exit visa with the fundamental requirement of having “permission from their parents or guardian to leave, duly authorized by a Public Notary. In the case that one of the parents is outside the country, they must present a Certificate of Migratory Movement of their last departure, which must be inserted in the notarized permission,” states the article.
Martínez says that she had never had problems taking her children outside the country, nor in previous governments.
There are cases where Immigration denies granting or renewing the passports of minors. An opposition activist, who for reasons of security preferred to tell her story anonymously, said that in 2021 in Immigration they did not want to grant an exit permit for her four-year-old son. For that reason, she and her family eventually were forced to leave the country in an irregular fashion for Costa Rica.
Since the expiration date of the passport of her son was close, the source went to the Nicaraguan consulate in Costa Rica to request the renewal of the document. Nevertheless, they told them that they were going to review “the record” of the child. “I believe that this mechanism is a form of blackmail for the parents, because they think that maybe you are not going to leave the country if your children do not leave…Not everyone decides to leave in an irregular fashion with their children, it is not an easy decision to cross the border with them.”
The activist feels that they will not grant her son his passport and they will be left stuck in Costa Rica, until their requests for asylum are approved, a process that can take up to four years.
Like all the transgressions of human rights that the regime commits, this is one more of those which are contradictory, since Nicaragua is part of the UN Convention of the Rights of Children, an international instrument which was signed on November 20, 1989, approved on April 19, 1990 and then ratified in the month of October that same year.
Article 2 states that all rights must be applied to all boys and girls, without exception, and it is the obligation of the State to take the needed measures to protect children from all forms of discrimination. Among them are: political opinion or opinions of another nature, national, ethnic or social origins, economic position, physical impediments, birth or any other condition of the child.
Checkpoint III: “You cannot enter Nicaragua”
The hand of migratory repression also extends to the airlines of neighboring countries. The first of July of 2022 in the Oscar Arnulfo Romero airport of El Salvador, 518 kilometers from Managua, an agent of the Avianca airline said to the Nicaraguan sociologist María Teresa Blandón that she could not board the plane to return to Nicaragua. “The government of Nicaragua sent us a list where you appear and point out that you are prohibited from entering the country,” they told Blandón. Thus began what she calls a “banishment” on the part of the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo.
DIVERGENTES sent a question by email to Avianca to confirm the veracity of these cases and to know how the mechanism functions of not allowing passengers to board who are traveling to Nicaragua, but up to now a response has not been received.
“We are banished, we are people who the regime has forced into exile,” stated Blandón. In May 2022 the dictatorship ordered the closing of the Feminist Program La Corriente, a feminist organization that offered workshops and a space for Nicaraguan youth and members of sexual diversity. The cancelation of the organization that Blandón led was orchestrated through the National Assembly, controlled by the party in power, as part of the attack against NGOs which it has carried out since the beginning of the protests of April 2018.
Blandón had been able to leave the country to Chile on June 24th, a month after the cancelation of the NGO. A source from Immigration stated that this strategy is more recent and consists in allowing those identified as opponents to leave, to later leave them without the possibility of being able to return. “This modality is used to remove a little the responsibility for Migration for all the repression, and that it be the airlines that are responsible for communicating to the people that they cannot return,” says the source. A euphemism for banishment.
On November 30, the delegate of the EFE agency in Nicaragua, Luis Felipe Palacios, met the same fate when he tried to return from Panama after a work trip. “We inform you that the request to return has not been authorized by the authorities of Migration in Nicaragua. You will not be allowed to board,” according to the email that the Avianca airline sent to the delegate of EFE in Nicaragua.
The trip of Blandón was for personal reasons. A week later, when she tried to return, she could not. “I can tell you that it is a very difficult situation because no one is prepared to stay anywhere. I had my return ticket, and it was not in my plans to stay outside the country. It ends up being a very disconcerting situation,” she added. It is because for the last 30 years of her life she dedicated herself to working with Nicaraguan women and young people in La Corriente Feminista.
For the sociologist, it is a “serious violation of the constitutional rights of Nicaraguans.” “No one can oblige any citizen, nor force a person to reside or abandon the place where you live,” explained Blandón.
Article 31 of the Constitution of Nicaragua states that “Nicaraguans have the right to circulate and set their residence in any part of the national territory.”
From exile María Teresa Blandón defends the fact that no one can take away her nationality, even though the regime might deny her entry into the country.
“That is why he has control of the entire State, because he can take away nationality, citizen identity card, passports, can leave you without the legal documents that you need as a citizen, expropriate all your rights. We are Nicaraguan citizens who have been deprived of our political and civil rights. That is the status for me. I am a Nicaraguan and I will be until I die,” she finished.
The disposition of the dictatorship also has been applied to Nicaraguan journalists with international megaphones, like the case of Tiffany Roberts, correspondent for the channel UNIVISION. Roberts was going to take a flight from Miami to Managua for the purpose of visiting her family, but prior to boarding they told her in the airport that she could not get on the plane. “They did not give a reason. The airline just said that the government of Nicaragua had not accepted my request” she said.
Checkpoint IV: “We live in a jail”
The blockage of the departure points of the country also affects public employees and mid-level leaders of the regime. In March 2022, a functionary of the Judicial Branch named Carlos was told at Migration at the airport in Managua that he could not leave because “he did not have the authorization to do so.”
“It left me cold,” says Carlos, who accepted to tell his story under the condition of anonymity. “I asked for explanations, and I was told that I had not asked for permission,” said the public official. Carlos was aware of certain prohibitions on leaving that the regime had placed on some of his superiors. Nevertheless, he never expected that one day it would affect him.
“I called my immediate boss and told him everything. But he responded that he could not do anything because he had not been allowed to leave the country either since 2019,” Carlos explained. The trip back to his house was long, longer than usual. Without being held in a cell of the national penitentiary system, the prohibition against leaving the country made him understand that in Nicaragua no functionary who is of interest to the Sandinista regime can leave without authorization.
The case of Carlos is not an exception. In all the offices of the Ministries of the Sandinista Government the same thing is happening. Two sources consulted by this communication media, one from the Foreign Ministry and another from the Nicaraguan Tourism Institute (INTUR), confirmed that there is complete control over requests for vacations and leaving the country.
The espionage network woven by Vice Minister Cañas delegates to other officials who have their complete trust the mission of collecting information on State workers. Their “snitches”, stated the source from the Foreign Ministry, are the political secretaries who are in each one of the Government institutions. These “spies” are responsible for following up on public employees who have sensitive information and the “desire” to leave Nicaragua.
But not all Government functionaries are of interest to Cañas and the Sandinista regime. The source from INTUR consulted said that public employees who have greater pressure on them are those who have been directly linked to the official repression that increased starting in 2018.
“In first place are the workers of the Judicial Branch. I am referring to judges, prosecutors, magistrates. Then there are the functionaries of other institutions that have important information about the Government and who might talk if they leave the country. And lower down are those who are repentant, who also know things and who are tired and want to get out of the system,” stated the source from INTUR who has been in meetings where these directives have been discussed
The lawyer Yader Morazán, former functionary of the Judicial Branch in exile in the United States, revealed that Judge Roberto Zúniga, originally from Puerto Morazán, Chinandega left the country in July of this year and requested political asylum in the United States.
Before the desertion of Zúniga, people of importance left their posts like Arturo McFields, former ambassador of Nicaragua to the OAS, and Javier Martínez Ramírez, former major commissioner of the Police in Madriz. The former diplomat left in March of this year and Ramírez in November of 2021.
The resignation of public officials from their posts, in addition to having a moral impact on Sandinism, has raised the levels of paranoia to the point of closely watching over every step of employees who have little desire to stay in the country.
“While some insecure people have to demonstrate their fidelity by rending homage to Ortega and his family project, in a parallel reality the judge abandoned his post and the country to leave through back trails along with his entire family,” stated the lawyer.
According to Morazán, Zúniga belonged to the local courts in municipalities that generally deal with less serious crimes, civil cases of lesser value, family court. In contrast to the provincial courts, they have nothing to do with political prisoner processes.
Carlos did not personally know Zúniga. Nevertheless, he has an idea about why, in spite of not being a functionary of interest within the repressive scheme of the Sandinista regime, he abandoned the country along with his entire family. “Maybe like the case of many who have had to leave and have talked to me, he was tired of serving Daniel Ortega,” he said.
The impediment also is extended to “those allied with the government.” In November 2021 immigation authorities blocked the departure of Álvador Baltodano Monroy, the son of the retired general Álvaro Baltodano Cantarero, Presidential Delegate for the Promotion of Investments. Another who was prevented from leaving was Leonardo Torres, the President of the Nicaraguan Council for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises ( CONIMIPYME), whose legal status was eliminated this year by the National Assembly.
On November 23 of that same year Daniel Rosales was given “country arrest”, the son of the deceased magistrate of the Supreme Electoral Council, Francisco “Chicón” Rosales. According to a source from the Ministry of the Interior, he tried to travel to the United States, but was sent back home. Rosales alleged that he was travelling for medical reasons, but he was denied the right to leave.
There are no permissions given even for training
At the end of 2022 Nicaragua has been turned into a jail that even blocks the departure of university students and State workers who want to study outside the country.
At the beginning of August, the National University Council (CNU) issued a memorandum that obliged all public and private universities to report the migratory movements of their academic and administrative personnel. In the government, authorizations to leave the country are only granted to those closest to the regime.
The memorandum of the CNU demanded that university presidents “formally” report the full name of the person who is going to enter or leave the country, their identification or passport number, the country they are coming from or going to, date of arrival or departure from the country, reason for the visit, and the duration of their stay in Nicaragua.
Notice of CNU to Universities mandating reporting of all travel related to academic one week in advance of date of departure or arrival.
“The order of the regime reaffirms the implementation of what was feared with the reform of Law 89, which is to give to the governing body powers that eliminate, not just university autonomy, but also the rights established in the Constitution for all citizens,” indicated Ernesto Medina, former university president and former president of the CNU.
Francisco*, an official from the Ministry of Health (MINSA), tried to leave the country this year but was not able to. He followed all the protocol: he requested vacation time, asked his immediate superior for authorization, and waited…he waited several weeks without getting a response to his request. He insisted with his boss, but his boss responded that he was not the person that granted the permission, but someone “above.”
“Some of my fellow workers left the country and followed the same protocol, but I was not able to,” he said with annoyance. Francisco has requested “permission” to attend a training event and his absence was going to last ten days. “But they did not let me. They simply did not give me their approval,” he lamented.
Francisco grew up in a Sandinista home. His grandfather was a guerrilla fighter who died in the eighties in a combat zone in northern Nicaragua. Even though he was instilled with a love for the party and the image of Daniel Ortega from an early age, he developed critical thinking and has been against the official repression.
“I work in the State, but I serve Nicaraguans. I have a family and I have remained in my post out of a matter of conviction and need. But the environment, little by little, is unsustainable,” he says.
Some of Francisco´s fellow workers, in central offices as well as provincial ones, are experiencing the same, and some opt for leaving the country because of the very repression that the Sandinista dictatorship imposes on public institutions. Permissions are denied without explanation, says this public official.
“They ask you to follow an entire process and in the end, they tell you no. But, for example, the political secretaries (other public workers who have great power in institutions) leave whenever they wish. I suppose that they will have interests in the country,” revealed Francisco.
The fact that they would not let him leave the country to continue his profession formation was a blow that Francisco still has not assimilated. “We live in a jail,” complains this public official, who does not know the reasons why he was not allowed to leave. “They know that we resist in silence, but it is illogical that I might try to escape when I have my entire life here, “he stated.
“Many decided to leave because they are not willing to live this way. But those of us who do not, we have to look for how to survive,” he concluded.
This report is part of Farm Republic, a project on the coverage of authoritarianism in Central America and Mexico of the Regional Editors, an alliance between media and journalists in the region, among them DIVERGENTES.