More than 50,000 children and adolescents in Nicaragua are the first affected by the massive closure of Non-Profit Organizations (NPOs) ordered by the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, calculates the Office of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor of the United States Department of State, which values the Ortega act as a “show of its coldness towards the most vulnerable.”
Through a campaign on the Twitter social network, the US government office pointed out that the organizations canceled by the Ortega-Murillo regime – which already exceed the first thousand and could double – provided education services, school meals to malnourished youth and free operations to children with cleft palate. However, they were canceled because the regime perceives them as “a threat to its power.”
“They deliberately sacrifice the health and education of children to favor their own power,” says one of the messages released by that State Department office.
The Ortega-Murillo regime shows its callousness toward the most vulnerable in Nicaragua by shuttering a charitable organization that sheltered young victims of violence and the abandoned elderly and provided day care for children from low-income families. pic.twitter.com/SpAPcKpphS
— State Department: Democracy, Human Rights, & Labor (@StateDRL) July 22, 2022
The US government office also pointed out that the Ortega-Murillo regime showed “its coldness towards the most vulnerable” by closing organizations such as the Missionaries of Charity, which gave shelter to young victims of violence and abandoned elderly people and provided daycare centers for children of families of scarce resources.
Previously the US Undersecretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Brian Nichols, disclosed part of the content of this campaign to warn that the Ortega-Murillo regime “plans to close 1,797 non-profit organizations, but the real number could be much higher.” tall”. From 2018 to date, the Sandinista government has outlawed 1,080 NGOs.
On his Twitter account, the senior official posted that “the regime cares more about remaining in power than about the well-being of its people.”
In 2022 alone, the Ortega-Murillo regime canceled more than 800 NGOs and confiscated their assets, citing charges such as terrorism and “undermining national sovereignty.” The regime is afraid of anything they think threatens their power, even if it benefits the people of Nicaragua. pic.twitter.com/PTNAjldYpF
— Brian A. Nichols (@WHAAsstSecty) July 20, 2022
Nichols also pointed out that the closure of NPOs and the unjustified persecution of civil society by the Ortega-Murillo regime “exhausted crucial services for Nicaraguans, causing unnecessary suffering.”
So far in 2022, Ortega and Murillo have annulled 1,006 Non-Profit Organizations (NPOs). A monitoring of CONFIDENTIAL shows that the regime has closed environmental, educational, child rights defenders, human rights, women, adolescents, indigenous rights, culture, entrepreneurship, democracy and health NGOs, regardless of the impact this has generated to their beneficiaries .
More than 30% of the 1,080 canceled NPOs focused on various areas of development, while more than 15% executed social projects and served disadvantaged communities and risk groups.
The regime accuses the organizations of not registering as foreign agents with the Ministry of the Interior (Migob) and failing to comply with the General Law of Regulation and Control of Non-Profit Organizationswhich entered into force on May 6, “hindered the control and surveillance” carried out by the Migob.
The canceled organizations do not have the right to appeal the decision of Parliament and, in many cases, the former directors have denounced that the Migob established obstacles for them to comply with all the requirements mandated by law, including the Foreign Agents Regulation Law, pointed out by lawyers to be an unconstitutional norm.
