The Police of the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo assaulted the building of the feminist organization Colectivo de Mujeres de Matagalpa, located in the north of the country, this Thursday, September 1. The confiscation of the property occurs a year after the NGO was stripped of its legal status by Parliament, dominated by the Sandinista Front.
Riot police and plainclothes police arrived at 9:00 a.m. at the building where the Collective operated with a history of 31 years of work in defense of women’s rights, they broke padlocks and locks and entered through the main door, a close source confided. to the organization.
The two-story building was almost empty, since it still housed the organization’s library with more than 18,000 books on children’s literature, school textbooks, history, fiction, ecology, economics, health, violence and human rights. The building, where the NGO operated until August 2021, is owned by a group of private individuals, the source assured on condition of anonymity.
The Collective was consolidated as a key NGO in the north of Nicaragua, one of the areas most affected by sexist violence, which in 2021 registered 71 femicides throughout the country. The organization assisted some 10,000 citizens annually, at an average rate of 25 women a day, who sought care as victims of abuse at the hands of their partners or ex-partners. With the closure of the organizations ordered by the Government, the beneficiaries were adrift because, precisely, they attended the associations looking for answers that they did not find in the Police.
The Collective denounced the closure of its organization as “legal arbitrariness based on tricks and lies” in August 2021. This NGO is one of more than 50 —according to a count of CONFIDENTIAL- that work to protect the rights of women, from the field of violence prevention and accompaniment to victims to promoting their empowerment and economic development, which have been eliminated by the Ortega regime from the end of 2018 to the beginning of August 2022 .
The Mesoamerican Initiative of Women Human Rights Defenders registers 80 feminist organizations closed by the regime from 2018 to July 2022. This indicates that with the latest cancellations, that number could be much higher.
Confiscations to other organizations
The Ortega regime has canceled 1,781 civil society organizations from the end of 2018 to September 2022, according to a registry of CONFIDENTIAL. More than 95% of cancellations of organizations, foundations and agencies have occurred so far in 2022.
After the cancellation of the legal personality of the NGOs, the regime has discretionally confiscated several of their properties, protected by the new law 1115, General Law for the Regulation and Control of Non-Profit Organizations (OSFL).
Last June, the Police in Jinotega (in the north of the country) occupied the facilities of the Children’s Association of Working Boys and Girls tuktan sirpi and the Association of Education and Communication “La Cuculmeca”, just fifteen days after including them in a list of 96 NGOs whose legal status was canceled by Parliament. The same has happened with other organizations such as the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (Cenidh) or the feminist organization La Corriente, in Managua.
