The updated report published by the Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua (GHREN) documents systematic violations of religious freedom not only against the Catholic Church, but also against other Christian religions such as the Evangelical Church, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons.
The investigation reveals that the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, between April 2018 and March 2024, carried out 73 arbitrary arrests of members of the Catholic Church and other Christian religions, of which 69 are men and 4 women. “Among those arrested were priests, pastors and members of evangelical churches, seminarians, lay people who carried out journalistic and/or artistic work in defense of human rights in religious organizations and parishioners,” says the report.
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The document includes testimony from 63 members of the Catholic Church and other Christian denominations, as well as records of complaints on social media. The report also reports 45 attacks against temples, as well as the prohibition of processions, another attack on freedom of worship.
It summarises more than 600 attacks against religious institutions since April 2018. These include 117 sieges and other forms of obstruction of temples and/or religious buildings, 80 thefts or desecrations in temples, 64 prohibitions of religious activities and other acts of popular piety and 13 graffiti with offensive writings.
The arrest of the Bishop Rolando Alvarezaccused of “undermining national integrity” and “spreading false news,” was one of the strongest blows to the Catholic Church, according to the document. In addition, the expulsion of the apostolic nuncio Waldemar Stanislaw and orders of nuns and monks exposed the regime’s harassment of Catholicism.
GHREN reports that in 2018 it was able to document the arrests of three priests, two evangelical pastors and two parishioners. These arrests were related to their participation in the protests of April and May of that year, when social protests began.
Also evangelical sectors
Several evangelical pastors were victims of harassment and intimidation by the Sandinista Police. In October 2022, on the South Caribbean Coast, uniformed officers threatened to kill a pastor and demanded that he close the church, after the words he spoke during a sermon were misinterpreted, the report explains.
The Group of Experts also received information indicating that members of churches of other Christian denominations had to ask the police for permission to carry out religious acts, which were denied. The most important celebration of the evangelical church, the anniversary of the translation of the Bible into Spanish, was prohibited in the Plaza de la Biblia in Managua in 2022 and 2023, by order of the law enforcement institution, subject to Ortega’s rule.
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“Many church members stopped attending for fear of becoming targets of reprisals, and several activities were suspended by order of police officers by the end of the year,” says one evangelical pastor’s testimony to the group of experts. The closure of the Evangelical University of Nicaragua, the Polytechnic University of Nicaragua and the Adventist University of Nicaragua are also recorded in the report.
Jehovah’s Witnesses do not escape
The report mentions that “on November 27, 2023, in a rural area of Chontales, the Police verbally indicated to a leader of Jehovah’s Witnesses that he could only hold his religious activities on Sundays and no longer during the week as they were normally held.”
On February 9, 2024, the police forced the coordinator of the Jehovah’s Witnesses church, located on the South Caribbean Coast, to cancel all religious activities and close the meeting hall, otherwise they could be fined. “In April 2023, the authorities prohibited members of this church from continuing to distribute Bible study materials on the streets,” he notes.
The Group of Experts recorded 63 new cancellations of the legal personality of non-profit organizations that took place between January 1 and March 31, 2024. Of these, 23 were religious organizations, both evangelical and Catholic, and the closure of universities to these religious institutions is not included.
Among the 222 people released from prison and expelled from the country in February 2023, the report highlights that there were eight priests, three journalists from Catholic media and an evangelical pastor.
