The National Council of Rectors (CONARE) of Costa Rica condemned the repression in Nicaragua and asked the members of the Central American Higher University Council (CSUCA) not to be silent or indifferent in the face of arbitrariness, the work of the Ortega-Murillo dictatorial regime, which he calls “ignominious acts” in a statement official.
On the contrary, the organization urges its members to assume the defense of university autonomy, human rights and Latin American democracy. The rectors assured in a letter addressed on January 26 to Carlos Guillermo Alvarado Cerezo, general secretary of the CSUCA, that they have followed with great concern the disrespect and violation of autonomy in Nicaraguan universities, as well as the violence exerted against the student movement .
They recall the human rights violations committed since April 2018, which have been documented by the national and international community. According to CONARE, studies by human rights organizations and multiple publications show that the Nicaraguan regime has to its credit the death of university students, the exile of thousands of citizens and political prisoners, among which they mention the seven presidential candidates arbitrarily detained in the months prior to the November 2021 vote, in which Ortega was re-elected for a fourth consecutive term.
“Among the people arbitrarily detained are presidential candidates, political and social activists, student leaders, human rights defenders, journalists and business representatives. All these events have as a corollary a regime that has lost all democratic legitimacy, as most of the international community has stated,” the letter states.
The re-election of the Sandinista ruler, and his wife and Vice President Rosario Murillo, was considered illegitimate by at least 40 countries of the international community and deserved a condemnation of 25 countries of the Organization of American States (OAS), in which they demanded the freedom of political prisoners, a total of 170 throughout the country.
“As a form of protest and solidarity with the people of Nicaragua in general and with its university community in particular, the Costa Rican universities that are members of CONARE, we agree to refrain from participating in any university activity that CSUCA convenes in our long-suffering brother country,” says the pronouncement.
The statement is signed by the president of CONARE, Rodrigo Arias Camacho, rector of the State Distance University, and by four of his colleagues: Gustavo Adolfo Gutiérrez, rector of the University of Costa Rica; Paulino Méndez Badilla, Technological Institute of Costa Rica; Francisco José González, National University; and Emmanuel González Alvarado, National Technical University.
The rectors recalled that they have assumed the values and aspirations of the Cordoba reform in 1918, promoted by the Argentine university youth, which consolidated the exercise of freedom of thought, academics and self-government, which would be known as university autonomy and also They mentioned the loss of life caused by the repression against students in the cases of Nicaragua: January 23, 1959, in the context of the student movements in Mexico and France in 1968, other Latin American countries and the United States.
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