The regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo blocked the entry into their homeland of the director of the canceled La Corriente Regional Feminist Program, the sociologist María Teresa Blandón, and the vicar of the Santo Cristo de Las Colinas parish in Managua, the priest Juan de Dios García, who were returning to Nicaragua, each on their own, after a work tour.
Blandón left the country on June 24 through the Augusto C. Sandino International Airport in Managua, where Immigration agents conducted a “long interrogation,” but he had no major difficulty traveling. It was not until his return, on July 1, that she was notified by the Avianca airline that she could not return to her country.
The sociologist explained that she complied with all the migratory requirements of the regime, but when she arrived at the airport, two hours before taking the flight, the airline informed her that she could not board because “the Government of Nicaragua had sent them a notification saying that I was prohibited from entering the country,” he specified.
Father García, for his part, left Nicaragua on a date not yet specified and his return to the country was scheduled for this Tuesday, September 13, but the Immigration authorities notified him twice by email that he is prohibited from returning to his home. homeland.
A source from the Catholic Church indicates that the priest – who in 2018 worked as a pastor in the Santiago parish in Jinotepe, and who was transferred to Managua due to threats from the regime – would be returning from a vacation in the United States but could not board the plane.
Regime decides who enters and who does not
For Blandón it is unfortunate that in Nicaragua “we live in a dictatorship” that assumes the “right to decide who can live in Nicaragua and who cannot”, since this situation violates the most basic rights of Nicaraguans contemplated in the Constitution.
The exile of compatriots “is a very offensive thing, very abusive,” said the sociologist. Unfortunately, Nicaragua is already, after Cuba, the second country in Latin America that resorts to “such abusive practices,” she commented.
Blandón also emphasized that “the Ortega Murillo regime does not own Nicaragua,” but “it is even perverting the principle of the rights of nationals,” he added.
Finally, the sociologist commented that, in these two and a half months that she has been in forced exile, she is reorganizing her life and trying to continue “denouncing the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship and the systematic violation of human rights” of Nicaraguans.
Cancellation and theft of La Corriente
Last May, the Ortega and Murillo regime canceled and confiscated military manual the facilities of the La Corriente Feminist Regional Program Association, which was directed by Blandón, arguing alleged non-compliance with current legislation. A fact that the sociologist assured that “is not legal” because these laws “contravene what is established in the Political Constitution of the Republic, which clearly establishes freedom of association.”
The Foreign Agents Regulation Law orders NGOs to register as “foreign agents”; however, La Corriente decided not to do so because said legislation —which integrates a combo of repressive laws manufactured by the regime— “contravenes the Constitution and forces organizations to join a regime that they have invented,” Blandón explained in an interview with the Program Tonight.
“La Corriente decided not to register as a foreign agent because we did not reach such a definition. We are a group made up of Nicaraguans who have acted for almost 30 years in the national territory, which is made up of nationals, there is no reason for us to be declared foreign agents,” said the also feminist.
He added that the State “does not have any legitimate basis to try to intervene and control the dynamics of civil society organizations, as it has effectively tried to do within the framework of the law that they approved at the end of last year,” he questioned.
