Within the framework of the 201 years of Nicaragua’s independence from the Kingdom of Spain and in the face of the serious human rights crisis that the country is experiencing, the auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Managua, Monsignor Silvio José Báez, encouraged citizens not to stop “dream and fight” for an independent Nicaragua.
The cardinal, in forced exile in the United States, affirmed that in an independent Nicaragua “reason and kindness, plurality in unity, peace that springs from justice and freedom at the service of the common good must prevail,” values that they were severed by the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo.
The dictatorial couple governs Nicaragua as they please and with an iron fist. Their permanence in power has been cultivated through the use of force, repression, exile, death, threats and the imprisonment of any dissenting voice.
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More than 200 people remain imprisoned for political reasons in a country where uncertainty and despair of democratic change reign. Thousands of families have left Nicaragua due to the lack of employment, the cost of living and the worsening of the police state that the dictatorship imposed on the country.
“The fight to be independent continues, let’s not lose hope!”, the bishop published on his Twitter social network account accompanied by an image of the blue and white flag of Nicaragua, the same one that is prohibited from being used in any civic demonstration and peaceful against the Ortega Murillo regime.
The dictatorship has plunged the country into a social, political and human rights crisis since 2018 as a result of the civic revolt that occurred due to the attempt to control the internet and social networks, the ineffectiveness of the state to deal with the fire in the Indio Maíz Biological Reserve and the failed social security reform. The demonstrations were repressed with bullets by the Police in conjunction with paramilitary groups.
The Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) concluded in a report that crimes against humanity were committed in Nicaragua. The regime denies the facts and accepts that there were 200 deaths, but IACHR statistics confirm that there were 355 people killed in the framework of the social protests.
