After 31 years working in the defense, promotion and dissemination of the rights of women victims of sexist violence, the Ortega regime seized the building from the feminist organization Grupo Venencia.
“Everything was de facto confiscated,” said a feminist leader from Matagalpa who prefers to omit her name for fear of reprisals. She also added that “it is an act of sexist violence on the part of the government, accustomed to trampling rights as if those rights were cockroaches.”
“The Venancia Group was founded by women to defend women against the State and society that constantly violates their elementary rights and this criminal act makes it clear that the Nicaraguan government is neither good, nor loving, nor anything, it is a sexist, violent, unworthy, hypocritical, cynical, and criminal government,” the feminist leader said, sobbing.
rage and helplessness
“At this moment I cry with rage, with impotence, because while these criminals crush rights, women continue to be violated in the countryside, in the cities, in churches, abroad, they suffer in silence and even die in silence,” she said. .
The women who are part of the organization’s board of directors denounced the takeover of their facilities internationally. “The only thing this regime knows how to do is kill and it kills slowly, quietly, they are gangsters who run over dignities and push the most vulnerable into a void, but one day their time will come and all of Nicaragua will not absolve them,” said the feminist leader.
The Sandinista government confiscated the building with a contingent of riot police officers, members of the Attorney General’s Office, and civilian activists collaborating with the regime.
No one will strip them of their commitment, they say
In a statement, the Venancia Group considered that: “this is a robbery, it is not even a confiscation, because they are not complying with 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 statement ends.
Grupo Venancia is a non-governmental organization, founded 31 years ago in Matagalpa with the efforts of national and foreign feminist women, committed to the defense of women’s rights and in frank respect, harmony and coordinated work with the LGBTQ communities of the department. matagalpino.
The agency guaranteed the direct and permanent employment of some 15 heads of family and another dozen temporary jobs in Matagalpa and in rural areas. They organized all kinds of activities in the city and in the countryside focused on citizen participation, human, sexual and reproductive rights, training, among others.
Served as a cultural center
The Grupo Venancia building also housed cultural activities for the general population. They called it the Guanuca Cultural Center, where there was a bar service, restaurant, theatrical presentations, live music, poetry recitals, presentation of books by local, national and foreign authors.
The Venancia Group was stripped of its legal personality on the grounds that it had failed to deliver the financial reports established by Nicaraguan law to the Ministry of the Interior.
According to them, “the government lies blatantly”, because the directives have verified that said documentation was presented on time and in due form, but the officials of the dictatorship never agreed to receive it.
By United Voices
