The Daniel Ortega regime, through the Ministry of the Interior (Migob), approved the validation of the registration of six sports organizations, in the midst of a wave of illegalization of more than three thousand non-profit organizations, to which the laws created in 2020 to eliminate them.
Among the OFSL validated is the Nicaragua Joven Association (Nica Speed), an organization linked to the automobile race and whose “honorary president” is the former Sandinista guerrilla commander and economic adviser to the Daniel Ortega regime, Bayardo Arce.
Related news: Regime will exceed a thousand NGOs canceled in Nicaragua
The validation is covered in the fourth article of Law No. 1127, Law of Amendments and Additions to Law No. 1115, General Law for the Regulation and Control of Non-Profit Organizations and Amendments to Law No. 522, General Law on Sports, Physical Education and Physical Recreation, which states that “non-profit sports organizations for physical education and physical recreation, and union, business chambers, must validate their registration before the General Directorate of Registration and Control of OSFL in charge of the Ministry of the Interior”.
Based on the foregoing, Ministerial Agreement No. 34-2023-OSFL, published in La Gaceta, the official gazette, states that NICA SPEED “has complied with the requirements in accordance with the Law, for the registration validation process before the General Directorate of Registration and Control of Non-Profit Organizations of the Ministry of the Interior”, thus granting it the perpetual number 7048 of validation, issued by the General Directorate of Registration and Control of Non-Profit Organizations.
The other five sports organizations that had the validity of the Ortega government are the Estelí Department Baseball Association (ASBEDES), the Nicaraguan Basketball Federation (FENIBALÓN), the Nicaraguan Canoeing Federation (FECANIC), the Sports Federation of the Nicaraguan Paralympic Committee (FEDCOPAN), Nicaraguan Federation of Karate-Do (FENIKA-DO). They were all granted perpetuity number, according to the disposition of María Amelia Coronel Kinloch.
It should be noted that although the majority of the NGOs canceled by the Ortega dictatorship affirm that they met the requirements contemplated in the previous articles, they were not validated, and rather, they were canceled, first through legislative dissolution and then, after a reform to the law, by executive order of the Ministry of the Interior.
Related news: Ortega regime exceeds three thousand NGOs canceled since 2018
From 2018 to date, the Nicaraguan regime has outlawed more than three thousand non-profit organizations, among which are human rights defenders, altruists, universities, businessmen, unions —such as the Superior Council of Private Enterprise (Cosep ), religious and even linked to the ruling Sandinista Front party.
for the lawyer Gonzalo Carrion, of the Nicaragua Nunca Más Human Rights Collective, only the organizations close to the Ortega regime are “surviving”, “without much room for freedom, because they have no possibility of expressing an opinion.”
He also stressed that it is probable that other organizations that are under the line of the dictatorship may be validated, “including others that have not been totally under the line but that cannot find another way to survive in the country and that happens because it is not easy to leave from Nicaragua”.
