Nicaragauan President Daneil Ortega is once again targeting the Catholic Church. On August 1, the former Sandinista guerrilla's government ordered the closure of eight Catholic radio stations, in the nothern diocese of Matagalpa. Leading the opposition was the church run by priest Uriel Vallejos, who was still barricaded in his rectory along with six other believers on Wednesday, August 3, surrounded by dozens of police and without electricity. This new phase of repression is also impacting the press, NGOs and the political opposition.
"Friends, faithful, come, I am under siege, the police have broken the locks of the chapel," Father Vallejos posted on his Twitter account on Monday, calling for help from parishioners in Sebaco (37,000 inhabitants), in the department of Matagalpa, 104 kilometers from the capital of Managua. "They are trying to take the [radio] equipment," he said, referring to Radio Catolica, one of the stations banned that day by the Telecommunications Institute (Telcor). From Monday August 1 to Tuesday August 2, police used tear gas to disperse the church members who came to defend their priest, injuring several people. "The government is trying to silence the voice of priests who denounce human rights violations committed by the regime," said Father Vallejos on Tuesday on the local Catholic channel, TV Merced, which is still active.
Media connected to the regime was silent on the event. Nevertheless, Telcor issued a statement on Tuesday justifying the closure of these radio stations due to "missing transmission permits." This assertion was contested by the bishop of Matagalpa Rolando Alvarez, confirming that he had provided the required documentation. The authorities have already on numerous occasions assaulted and harassed members of the clergy who denounce the repression against an uprising that began in April 2018 demanding Mr. Ortega's resignation, in power from 1979 to 1990 and from 2007 to the present. At the time, law enforcement officials killed 355 protesters, injured 2000 others and made hundreds of arbitrary arrests, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).
'Illegal arrests'
Other dissident voices have not been spared in this new wave of repression. David Mendoza, owner and director of the local television station RB3, announced on Tuesday in Matagalpa that Telcor had withdrawn its cable broadcasting license. Twelve days earlier, the large independent daily newspaper La Prensa, which saw its headquarters in Managua confiscated by authorities on August 13, 2021, announced in an article that it had exfiltrated from the country its "journalists, editors and photographers." This initiative was justified, according to the newspaper, by the "illegal arrests," made on July 6, of two of its reporters who had just covered the expulsion from Nicaragua of members of the Catholic congregation the Missionaries of Charity, created by Mother Teresa.
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