On the occasion of Student Day in Nicaragua, which is commemorated every July 23 and in which the massacre carried out by the Somocista guard in 1959 is remembered, the Blue and White National Unit (Unab) pointed out that the same history has been repeated with the new Ortega dictatorship that “massacreed and imprisoned” dozens of students in the 2018 social protests.
The opposition bloc, also made up of students—some political prisoners and others forced into exile—affirmed that the Ortega dictatorship has been equal to and worse than Somoza’s, “perverting the institutional framework of the Nicaraguan State.”
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“It has eliminated university autonomy, it has imposed civil death against hundreds of university students by annulling their academic records, it has turned university and high school classrooms into spaces for official propaganda, and it has confiscated universities,” he listed.
He also recalled that the Nicaraguan regime, through the Police, keeps dozens of Nicaraguan students kidnapped in the country’s different prisons “and thousands have been forced into exile.”
“Just as the Somocismo ordered to shoot at the students in León 63 years ago —a student demonstration that was held in the city of León in repudiation of the crimes of the dictatorship—, the Sandinista regime has done it again, against the students and the people,” he stressed.
Despite the current repression and manipulation that some student sectors in Nicaragua are experiencing at the hands of Daniel Ortega’s dictatorship, Unab emphasized that “in the different stages of our modern history, the university and high school student movement has been a protagonist indispensable in the fight for democracy, freedoms, citizen rights and for their own demands such as university autonomy.
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“The student movement was key in the fight against the Somocista dictatorship and has been fundamental in the fight we are waging against the current regime that is now subjugating Nicaragua,” he remarked.
To date, the Ortega dictatorship has held dozens of university students and leaders captive, accused of common crimes or alleged “treason against the country,” including Samantha Jirón, Max Jerez, Lesther Alemán, Yader Parajón, and Muamar Vado.
One of the repressive actions of the dictatorship against students was the massacre at the Divina Misericordia church in Managua, on July 13, 2018, where a group of students who had barricaded themselves in the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua (Unan) took refuge. , being murdered the young university student Gerald Vásquez. All the crimes committed remain in impunity.
