ELLIS HEASLEY, of UK-based religious freedom advocacy CSW, says we must “amplify, support and strengthen the voices of those the government has made every effort to silence”…
London, UK
On 27th February the Nicaraguan Government, led by President Daniel Ortega and his wife and co-President Rosario Murillo, announced its withdrawal from the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC).
The development came just two days after the publication of a report by a group of UN experts which found that since April 2018 the Ortega-Murillo regime has “executed a phased strategy to entrench absolute control”, and that to achieve this it has “systematically carried out serious human rights violations”.
Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo greet supporters during an event to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the taking of the national palace by Sandinistas guerrilla in 1978, in Managua, Nicaragua, on 22nd August, 2018. PICTURE: Reuters/Oswaldo Rivas/File photo
The report called for legal action against Nicaragua at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), specifically in relation to possible violations of the Convention against Torture and the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, and for increased targeted sanctions on individuals, institutions and entities responsible for repression.
“[A]uthorities continued to prohibit or cancel most public religious events and activities, to monitor and restrict the content of prayers and sermons, and to harass, arbitrarily detain and force into exile hundreds of religious leaders, activists, journalists and human rights defenders that the regime perceives as a threat to its authority and survival.”
The subsequent withdrawal was not the first time the government has reacted badly to being criticised on the international stage. In November, 2021, Nicaragua announced its withdrawal from the Organisation of American States (OAS), just one week after the General Assembly of the OAS adopted a resolution declaring that the country’s most recent presidential elections, which were marked by the arrest of multiple opposition candidates, had ‘no democratic legitimacy’.
Of course, perhaps all this should be expected of set on ‘absolute control’, or, as CSW put it in a brand-new report of our own, on the “eradication of independent voices” in the country.
In 2024 the Nicaraguan Government cancelled the legal status of almost 2,000 independent civil society organisations – among them churches, schools, universities, faith-based charities, and even entire Protestant denominations – bringing the total number of organisations to have experienced such treatment since 2018 to over 5,500.
The authorities continued to prohibit or cancel most public religious events and activities, to monitor and restrict the content of prayers and sermons, and to harass, arbitrarily detain and force into exile hundreds of religious leaders, activists, journalists and human rights defenders that the regime perceives as a threat to its authority and survival.
In one case in November, Bishop Carlos Enrique Herrera Gutiérrez, President of the Roman Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nicaragua, was detained by police officers the day after he complained publicly about the efforts of government officials to disrupt church services by playing music on loudspeakers directly outside parishes during Sunday Mass and on other holy days such as Ash Wednesday.
Bishop Carlos Enrique Herrera Gutierrez. PICTURE: Supplied.
The next day, Bishop Herrera Gutiérrez was taken to the airport under police escort, given a plane ticket and his passport, and ordered to board a plane to Guatemala. He is the fourth bishop to have been forcibly exiled from the country for speaking out against the regime, alongside Bishops Rolando Álvarez Lagos, Isidro del Carmen Mora Ortega and Silvio José Báez.
The government’s crackdown also extends far beyond prominent religious leaders. At 6am on 10 August 2024, fifteen police officers wearing ski masks and armed with AK-47s arrested 49-year-old Carmen María Sáenz Martínez at her home in Lomas de Santo Tomas in Matagalpa City. Two hours later police in two patrol cars detained Carmen’s colleague Lesbia del Socorro Gutiérrez Poveda, aged 58, at the Guadalupana Farm in Samulali in the San Ramón Municipality.
Both women worked with the Diocese of Matagalpa, which was formerly led by the aforementioned Bishop Álvarez Lagos, however it remains unclear why they were detained, or indeed why their families have received no information regarding their wellbeing or whereabouts for over seven months since then.
In withdrawing from the HRC, and the OAS before it, the Nicaraguan Government is sending a clear message that it has no intention of relenting. It believes it can rely on the support of other human rights violators like China, Cuba, Russia and Venezuela to evade accountability and ignore the calls and criticism of members of the international community that still stand up for justice and democracy.
But we must not allow it. We must amplify, support and strengthen the voices of those the government has made every effort to silence, whether within the country or now forced into exile, challenge and condemn the other states that continue to prop it up, and ensure that cases like those of Carmen María Sáenz Martínez and Lesbia del Socorro Gutiérrez Poveda do not go under the radar no matter how much the regimers to see that they do.
Click here to read CSW’s new report on Nicaragua.
Ellis Heasley is public affairs officer at UK-based religious freedom advocacy CSW.
