On the morning of this February cho, the feminist collective Grupo Venancia denounced the occupation of its facilities by the Ortega-Murillo regime. The action came eight months after the cancellation of its legal status. The organization has been working for 31 years in different areas of Nicaragua supporting urban and rural areas, as well as adult and youth populations.
«Our headquarters has been a space for meeting and creation, and although we are no longer physically in that place, the seeds that were sown from there continue to multiply. We reiterate that, although they closed our doors, they will in no way erase our commitment to a homeland free of violence in all its dimensions, “says the group.
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The statement denounces that since 9 in the morning of this Wednesday, “there are police officers, riot police, PGR personnel and civilians forcibly taking over the facilities where we have worked for 31 years, in the Guanuca neighborhood of Matagalpa. The dispossession of our property is one more arbitrary step after the illegal cancellation of our legal status, because we already know that the laws are worthless paper in this country. This is another example of state violence against our rights.”
They reiterate that the facilities of the Venancia Group during all its years of activity were “an open house for feminist reflection and the personal and collective empowerment of women of all ages, mainly from rural areas of various departments in northern Nicaragua. It has also been a space for the healing of the wounds left by violence, caring for women and girls victims and survivors, and a stage to promote culture, art and activism in this city”.
“Las Venancias”, as the feminist group was also known, provided popular education and communication processes in Matagalpa and Jinotega since 1991.
They developed processes of personal and collective empowerment, fought against sexist violence and accompanied the healing of the consequences that it left on the victims. In addition, the facilities were also a space for “complaints and agreements, a meeting point for people from the LGBTQ+ community, not only to reflect on their rights, but to celebrate pride without any type of discrimination. This is a theft, it is not even a confiscation, because they are not following the legal procedures for it.”
“They deprive us of the premises, but not of our commitment to the defense of human rights in its entirety, nor of the ideal of a Nicaragua with justice, freedom and democracy, where working for the common good and defending rights is not a crime,” The collective statement ends.
From 2018 to date, the Ortega regime has annihilated more than three thousand organizations that focused on supporting the most vulnerable populations in matters of health, nutrition, education, combating violence, among others.
