The Daniel Ortega-Rosario Murillo regime is further cracking down on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), this time with a law that increase its control over the few NGOs left in Nicaragua, in a move to snuff them out or modify their mission, Argentine news site Infobae reported.
“This annihilates the very concept of NGOs, because the new legal framework establishes a participation of society with the Nicaraguan dictatorship. With this it denies, distorts, and erases by decree the very existence of these humanitarian organizations as we know them,” Juan Sebastián Chamorro, economist, former Nicaraguan presidential candidate and former president of the Nicaraguan Foundation for Economic and Social Development, told Diálogo on September 25. “We are talking here about absolute control of the NGOs, forcing them to pay taxes to the regime on any kind of income they may have.”
On August 20, the Legislative Assembly said that the reforms and additions are necessary, “for the correct and effective execution of the programs and projects developed by non-profit organizations and foreign agents, which will now run under the new operating model, called Alliances of Association.”
“In the paranoid mind of the Ortega-Murillo dictators, any organization that maintains a minimum of independence is seen as a threat,” Felix Maradiaga, former presidential candidate and president of the Foundation for the Freedom of Nicaragua, told Nicaraguan investigative news site Divergentes on August 17. “The intent of the regime is clear: They will only allow the existence of organizations that remain completely submissive, willing to act as mere intermediaries for international cooperation, without daring to question authoritarian policies or denounce human rights violations in this country.”
On August 19, the Ministry of the Interior also closed 1,500 NGOs for not reporting their financial statements, even though they make no profits, Nicaraguan news site 100 % Noticias reported. The indiscriminate shut down included sports, medical, business, social, educational, and religious NGOs, among others.
“The impact that these closures will cause will be negative. With the closure to date of more than 5,000 organizations, the losers are only the Nicaraguan people,” Martha Patricia Molina, a Nicaraguan lawyer in exile said via X. “All projects and social works that benefited the most vulnerable ceased to exist. Will the dictatorship now assume this role? Hardly.”
The regime has already eliminated more than 70 percent of the NGOs that operated in Nicaragua. According to Nicaraguan investigative news site Confidencial, as of August, the Ortega-Murillo regime has shut down 5,232 of the 7,227 NGOs that existed in 2017.
“This new disposition is, in reality, a death sentence for civil society in its most sacred sense: that of a free, participatory, and critical citizenship,” Maradiaga said.
“We must mention that all assets related to these NGOs such as houses, buildings, offices, records, historical documentation, bank accounts, vehicles, and movable and immovable property, are confiscated and become part of the treasury,” Chamorro said. “This, translated to the monetary power that this represents, is not at all negligible, since we are talking about properties of more than 5,000 organizations to date and increasing in number. Many of them have a physical presence and have spaces and offices. All of this will pass into the hands of the tyranny in power.”
This measure was approved after Venezuela, an unconditional ally of the Ortega-Murillo regime, approved a similar rule that will further intensify the persecution of opponents and critics of the Nicolás Maduro regime, following fraud accusations in the elections of July 28, BBC Mundo reported on August 15.
