As an extreme act of religious persecution, State terrorism, robbery and open warfare, it was cataloged by analysts consulted by Article 66 the onslaught unleashed this week by the Nicaraguan dictatorship against the Catholic Church, which froze bank accounts of several dioceses, after arresting and subjecting to investigation three priests, who pastor the area of Estelí and Matagalpa.
Lawyer and researcher Martha Patricia Molina pointed out that the dictatorship carried out an action “that denotes an open war against the Catholic Church.”
He said that the freezing of the bank accounts of the religious institution could bring “catastrophic consequences.” “They are suffocating her financially,” she warned.
Molina regretted that the dictatorship is also causing damage to working families in the country, as he is aware that this weekend, the parochial schools, whose bank movements were also blocked, had to make payroll payments and will not be able to do so. “This arbitrariness will also affect those Nicaraguan families. I hope that the Ortega-Murillo regime reverses this illegal and reckless attitude,” Molina said.
A priest in exile, who spoke with Article 66 On condition of anonymity, he described the blocking of bank accounts as theft and maintained that this repressive action will continue with the confiscation of more assets from the religious institution, because, according to what he said, the intention of the dictators Ortega and Murillo is to suffocate church.
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For his part, the opposition leader exiled by the dictatorship, Félix Maradiaga, assessed that the blocking of the bank accounts of various dioceses of the Catholic Church “is an extreme act of aggression and persecution.”
He added that the regime’s action represents “an explicit declaration of the true aspirations of the dictatorship: to silence and completely dissolve the voice and even the presence of an institution that, due to its moral weight in Nicaragua, is an obstacle in the plans of the Ortega-Murillos, to consolidate a dynastic dictatorship”.
“It is time for the international community to go to the phase of absolute ignorance of the regime,” exhorted the opposition politician.
Meanwhile, Danny Ariel Ramírez Ayerdis, executive secretary of the Center for Inter-American Legal Assistance for Human Rights (Calidh), described the recent attack by the dictatorship against the Church as “State terrorism”.
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“There is no going back: the freezing of the Church’s accounts clearly evidences the State terrorism that Nicaragua is experiencing,” said the lawyer through his personal Twitter account.
He added that from Calidh they had already warned that “in totalitarian regimes”, such as the one imposed by Ortega and Murillo in Nicaragua, “the only social space allowed is the partisan one.”
