On August 18, 2023, the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo accomplished what not even the previous despot dictator, Anastasio Somoza, dared to do, he closed the Central American University (UCA), and also stole all its assets, after accuse it of being a “center of terrorism” and in this way the Ortega-Murillo tyranny closed 64 years of academic history of what was considered one of the most prestigious houses of higher education in the country.
For the Group of Human Rights Experts for Nicaragua (GHREN), of the United Nations (UN), it was an arbitrary closure, for political reasons and in violation of human rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
«By virtue of the information analyzed, the Group of Experts has reasonable grounds to believe that the State of Nicaragua carried out the arbitrary closure of the Central American University for political reasons and with the purpose of ending autonomous academic institutions that could generate opinions or critical mobilizations and silencing the academic community and student movements,” says the most recent GHREN report, made public on November 6.
The UN experts carried out a detailed documentation of the case of the closure of the UCA and confiscation of all its assets, and the report details the disastrous chronology that the dictatorship followed to culminate with the theft of the Jesuit university.
This is how the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship stole the UCA
In the investigation and documentation process carried out by the GHREN, they found that, on August 19, 2023, Ortega police officers (armed and hooded), appeared, along with members of the judiciary, at the residence of six religious of the Company of Jesús, known as Villa Carmen, to demand that they immediately vacate the property, arguing that that home was also property of the Government.
«Although the religious (three of them in a highly vulnerable situation due to their age and state of health) showed the agents the property deed documentation that affects the home as a different asset of the Central American University, the agents “They ordered them to leave the house and all their belongings.”
That was just one of the last acts of anger and hatred shown by the dictators against the Society of Jesus, which administered the UCA. A day before, in La Gaceta, Official Gazette, the cancellation of the legal status of the house of higher education, which had been founded in 1960, had been published.
But in reality the process of closure and theft of UCA properties had begun a long time before, according to the GHREN investigation. Between 2014 and 2015, the Academy of Sciences, based at the UCA, organized a series of international scientific meetings in order to discuss the environmental unviability of the canal project promoted by the Ortega regime, and how it affects indigenous peoples and to the peasantry. The debate generated “was not well received by the authorities” and that’s when the reprisals began.
Related news: Jesuit organization demands Ortega “immediate cessation of the occupation of the UCA”
“These reprisals were manifested mainly through the instrumentalization of the law, the justice system and other State institutions against the University,” says the report, and also details that one of these forms of retaliation consisted of the reduction of funding from the State through the constitutional 6% for higher education, of which the UCA received part, which was finally canceled in its entirety in 2022.
The financial crisis had an effect on the scholarship benefits provided by the university. More than 50% of the 9,000 undergraduate students enrolled in 2018 were scholarship recipients. This benefit cannot continue to be applied to new income. At the time of the closure of the University in August 2023, there were only about 5,000 students between undergraduate, postgraduate and continuing training,” indicates the document prepared by the researchers.
Along with economic strangulation, the regime carried out harassment in every sense. The General Directorate of Revenue charged him taxes that he did not owe. The General Directorate of Customs blocked his imports and donations and even violated his correspondence.
Likewise, experts describe that, through the judicial system, the property registry and banks, the dictatorship arbitrarily immobilized their properties, even though they had not received justification or administrative or judicial processes for this immobilization.
Related news: UCR: The confiscation of the UCA only “reflects Ortega’s fear” of critical voices
«In 2023, the repressive acts against the Central American University intensified. On August 8, the management warned that both the bank accounts of the Central American University and those of its four directors and 10 other employees, of various ranks, had been frozen. The banks only mentioned that they had received orders,” the report states.
Six days later, on August 14, a resolution signed by the director of the Directorate of Alternative Conflict Resolution of the Supreme Court of Justice, María Amanda Castellón Tiffer, was published, revoking the renewal of accreditation issued on April 17, 2023 to Mediation Center of the Central American University.
And in an acceleration of events, a day later, on August 15, an order was notified to the management of the Central American University, signed by Judge Gloria María Saavedra Corrales and addressed to the rector, Father Rolando Alvarado, in which indicated that:
«The Central American University functioned as a center of terrorism, taking advantage of the conditions created with lies, to raise the levels of violence and destruction, organizing armed and hooded criminal groups that used terrorist methods, destroyed public universities… causing considerable economic losses to the country and “betraying the trust of the Nicaraguan people who welcomed them into our country.”
The same unofficial resolution, without prior judicial process, indicates that the UCA “through its main directors has continuously attacked the independence, peace, national sovereignty and self-determination of the Nicaraguan people, inciting the destabilization of the country, harming the interests supreme powers of the nation, international human rights conventions and treaties, altering peace, security and constitutional order.
With that argument, the Sandinista judge ordered “the seizure of the UCA’s real estate, seizure of all movable property, money, frozen bank accounts and bank deposits, all in favor of the State of Nicaragua.” The robbery was complete.
Related news: Ortega makes the cancellation of the UCA official in La Gaceta
Given the precipitation of events, and the imminent takeover of the UCA by the Police, according to the report, “some of the UCA personnel had to leave the country through informal border points practically immediately for fear of reprisals, even possible arrests.
48 hours later, on August 17, 2023, the National Council of Universities (CNU) reported on the creation of the “Casimiro Sotelo Montenegro National University”, on the facilities stolen from the UCA and formally appointed the Sandinista fanatic Alejandro Genet as rector.
August 18, when the dictatorship published in La Gaceta the cancellation of the legal personality of the UCA, said University had in practice already been disappeared by the regime.
The Group of Experts concludes that “it has reasonable grounds to believe that the State of Nicaragua has systematically violated the rights of students, teachers, academic managers and other university staff of the Central American University to freedom of conscience and thought, freedom of opinion and expression and freedom of association, enshrined in articles 18, 19 and 22 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
