The Ortega deputy Filiberto Rodríguez introduced a new initiative law to cancel the legal status of 101 civil organizations, the largest number of organizations to be closed in the hunt undertaken by the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo against civil society in Nicaragua.
The extensive list includes associations and civil organizations of all kinds: agricultural, environmental, support for youth, community development, religious, medical, charity work, human rights and child care, among other topics and areas of work and support for the citizenship.
Among this list, the Missionaries of Charity Association, the San Juan River Integral Development Foundation, the Labor Mediation Institute Association, the Nicaraguan Association for the Support of Small Farmers, the Association for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights, the Nicaraguan Foundation stand out. Aid Foundation, Association for the Development of Nicaraguan Boys and Girls, My Childhood Maternal Foundation and the Spirituality Foundation of Nicaraguan Boys and Girls.
The Association of Nicaraguan Anesthesiologists, the Catholic Foundation for Aid to the Human Development of Nicaraguans, the Association for the Progress and Development of Nicaragua, the Association for Business and Professional Women, the Foundation for the Development of Microfinance, the Foundation for the Development of Science and Technology, Nicaraguan Pharmaceutical College and the Somos Puente Youth Association.
In addition, they proposed to cancel the Nicaraguanet Foundation, the Green Development Foundation, the Nicaraguan Youth and Children Foundation, the Foundation for the Integral Development of Mayangnas Sauni Balna, the Association of General Naturo Orthopathic Doctors of Nicaragua and the Network Association of Civil Organizations of Ometepe, among many others.
With this new proposal, the number of associations and civil organizations that would be closed in this repressive escalation of the regime is 770, since November 29, 2018. But it was in 2022 when the regime began an unprecedented mass elimination, devastating 595 NGOs in five and a half months, without adding the 101 that will be outlawed during the plenary sessions of the National Assembly next week.
Photo: Confidential
An investigation published by CONFIDENTIAL tracked the social work, origin and years of operation in Nicaragua of all the organizations closed to date, with a database built from the legislative decrees and the resolutions of the Ministry of the Interior (Migob), published in the official newspaper La Gazette. The analysis reveals that 90% of these NGOs had been operating in the country for more than a decade and developed social, education, health, human rights, and cultural projects, among others. In addition, more than a dozen of these organizations had more than 50 years of experience.
The dissolution of these organizations occurred in a repressive context after the massacre against the citizen protests of the April 2018 Rebellion and worsened in 2021, when the regime annulled the political and electoral competition to ensure Ortega’s fourth consecutive term, who points to the NGOs to finance and participate in the alleged “failed coup attempt” against their government.
The arguments presented by deputy Filiberto Rodríguez are the same with which the regime has justified the hunt for these civil organizations, without due process being followed and without allowing them the right to defend themselves from being closed down.
Deputy Rodríguez argued again in this new law initiative that these NGOs allegedly fail to present financial statements, “according to the fiscal periods with a detailed breakdown of income, expenses, trial balance and details of donations, (origin, provenance and final beneficiary)”; They also did not report who makes up their boards of directors, previous donations from abroad, identity documents of their funders, and did not comply with the registration as Foreign Agents.
This argument is repeated in each decree, without presenting particular evidence by each organization and in compliance with a alleged ordering process executed by Migob. This state portfolio also does not respond to the questions of former directors of NGOs stripped of their legal status, who point out that they impose obstacles in the registration processes as foreign agents and other documentation necessary to be in order.
