A group of United Nations experts slammed the Nicaraguan government’s “systematic” attacks against Christians in a report this week. Following another report released in March, the group of UN Human Rights Council (HRC) on Monday described “systematic and widespread violations and abuses of international human rights law” documented against clerics.
Between January and March 2024, the experts registered “63 new cancellations of the legal status of non-profit organizations” including 23 religious ones. At the start of July, the government scrapped the legal status and confiscated the property of Catholic station Radio Maria, as well as other NGOs, arguing that it had not reported its source of income.
President Daniel Ortega and his vice president and wife, Rosario Murillo, argue that the church supported anti-government protests in 2018 which the couple claimed was an attempted coup backed by Washington. More than 300 people were killed during the demonstrations, according to the UN.
Murillo has described religious people as “children of the devil” or “agents of evil” who carry out “spiritual terrorism”. From April 2018 until March this year, the UN experts documented “73 cases of arbitrary detention of members of the Catholic Church and other Christian denominations”.
“The total figure could be higher,” the experts said. They include priests, pastors, members of evangelical churches, seminarians, parishioners, as well as lay people who do journalistic or artistic human rights work in religious organizations, they indicated in the update of the report.Â
The experts say the arrests and detention amount to “crimes against humanity”, while describing as “torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” the expulsion of critical Nicaraguans or the “arbitrary” revoking of nationality.
At the end of 2023, some 30 clerics were imprisoned and later sent to the Vatican. The UN experts said Ortega and Murillo both have “individual criminal responsibility” for using the state to “systematically repress” religious people.
