The assets of the affected NGOs are confiscated by the state. The few institutions that are now allowed to remain active are placed under state financial control.
Nicaragua’s government has declared 1,500 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) dissolved, including hundreds of religious organizations of all faiths. For years, they have not fulfilled their reporting obligations regarding their financial situation and the donations they have received, according to the Interior Ministry’s justification. The organizations’ assets will be confiscated by the state.
It is the same argument that the regime has used to intensify its fight against civil society since the anti-government protests of 2018. In recent years, more than 5,000 non-governmental organizations have been banned. But never before have so many been banned in one fell swoop as this week.
New rules now apply to around 2,400 organizations still active in Nicaragua. The Asamblea Nacional, which consists of parliamentarians loyal to Ortega, decided that in future NGOs will only be allowed to work in cooperation with the Ministry of the Interior. The government will manage the aid money that flows to the NGOs from abroad and thus ensure that the work of the organizations pursues the same goals as the government, explained a representative of the ruling Sandinista party.
Even friendship associations with Cuba are banned
Some of the bans that have now been imposed come as a surprise, such as that of the Association of Friends of Cuba. The Caribbean state is Nicaragua’s closest ally alongside Venezuela. Veterans’ associations of fighters from the Sandinista revolution, which Ortega once led, have also been banned. Rotary and horse riding clubs, small farmers’ cooperatives and dentists’ associations, among others, have also had to close.
The Brazilian-Nicaraguan Chamber of Commerce is also on the banned list. The once close relationship between Ortega and Brazil’s President Lula da Silva has deteriorated dramatically recently; last week, Brazil’s ambassador had to leave Nicaragua. Experts believe that Ortega wants to punish Lula da Silva because he did not recognize Ortega’s close ally Nicolás Maduro as the winner of the disputed presidential election in Venezuela at the end of July.
Ortega is becoming more and more radical
Ortega, who overthrew the dictator Anastasio Somoza in July 1979 as the leader of the guerrilla organization Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN), was elected president at the end of 1984. After being voted out of office in 1990, he returned to power in 2007 and has since continued to undermine democratic institutions. He has stayed in power through election manipulation. In 2018, he had protests led by students suppressed, killing between 300 and 500 people and arresting around 1,600.
Since then, he has taken even more rigorous action against critics. Before the 2021 presidential elections, he had the entire opposition leadership arrested. He even stopped short of former companions from the revolutionary era. But he also had critical church members arrested and sentenced before expelling them from the country. He recently placed his brother, who previously served as army chief and defense minister, under house arrest after he made critical statements about the regime.
Observers interpret the fact that the regime is increasing repression as a sign of increasing paranoia on the part of 78-year-old Ortega and his 73-year-old wife and Vice President Rosario Murillo. The latter is increasingly seizing power. A few days ago, she ordered the dismissal of the long-serving head of Ortega’s bodyguard. The esoteric Murillo is also said to be retreating ever deeper into her mystical world. Meanwhile, the Ortega-Murillo family, together with the top brass of the military, controls the country’s economy and media operations.