Nicaraguan novelist Sergio Ramirez, Cervantes Award 2017 and exiled due to the persecution of the Ortega Murillo regimedenounced this Wednesday, April 20, the claim from power in Nicaragua to silence civil society and “end the expressions of freedom and democracy.”
Ramírez reacted with a statement this afternoon to Parliament’s decision to remove legal status from the Luisa Mercado Foundation (FLM), in which he is president and which has carried out important work in the last 16 years in promoting Nicaraguan culture. .
The award-winning writer recalled that the FLM was dedicated to promoting musical education in Nicaragua, teaching dozens of children to play musical instruments, but also culture through a library that has more than 6,000 volumes, to open cultural spaces for young people and for children by putting at their disposal teaching and educational instruments.
“These are the crimes for which the foundation is punished,” Ramírez denounced. The FLM was the manager of the Centroamérica Cuenta literary festival, one of the best known in Latin America, directed precisely by the writer, who is based in Spain and has suffered persecution from the regime that, in addition, prohibited the circulation in the country of his last novel “Tongolele did not know how to dance”.
“Better times will come for the country”
The narrator protested the same for the cancellation of 24 other organizationswhich the State accused of not registering as foreign agents and failing to comply with obligations such as submitting their financial reports, updating their boards of directors, which was argued to outlaw them and confiscate their assets.
Ramírez recalled that there are already more than 100 organizations, which have been canceled by the regime, for “proclaiming freedom and democracy.” He affirmed that better times await and announced that he will continue with the work of the LWF, whose work he described as incomparable in Masatepe, the city where he was born.
“Better times will come for the country, we will recover democracy, we will recover freedom. Nicaragua will once again be a republic, just as Pedro Joaquín Chamorro dreamed of it,” said the FLM president.
In addition to the Foundation, called Luisa Mercado in honor of Ramírez’s mother, the Assembly approved the cancellation of the status of other organizations such as the Association for the Development of Solentinamefounded in 1982 by the father Ernest Cardinalwho until his death was critical of Ortega and was the object of state persecution.
The Permanent Commission for Human Rights (CPDH), the COEN Foundation, the Nicaraguan Association of Engineers and Architects (ANIA), CANTERA and CODENI, which deals with issues related to the defense of the rights of children and adolescents, also lost their legal status. .
According to the president of the Assembly, the Sandinista deputy Gustavo Porras, one of the most trusted operators of the presidential couple, in the case of ANIA they are registered as a business chamber in the Ministry of Industry, Development and Commerce, in which he ensured that they comply with their obligations to the State.
