Caribbean & Central America - December 2024

In mid-October Gonzalo Carrió, a member of Nicaraguan human rights NGO Colectivo de Derechos Humanos Nicaragua Nunca Más (CDHNN+), warned of a new phase of illegal property seizures by the government led by authoritarian President Daniel Ortega. The Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) administration had already begun seizing property in line with its crackdown on dissent which started in 2018.

Carrió made his remarks in a broadcast posted on social media on 16 October, the same day that the country’s attorney general, Wendy Morales, revealed that the FSLN government had declared 35 properties for public use. Morales, who in March this year was sanctioned by the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (Ofac) for being “complicit” in the government’s “oppression”, justified the confiscation of properties (whose previous owners were not identified), claiming that they were in a “state of abandonment and could be used to disturb the peace, social wellbeing, and citizen security.”

According to a report published in May this year by Observatorio Pro Transparencia y Anticorrupción (Opta), which is run by local rights NGO Hagamos Democracia, at least 135 properties have been seized by the FSLN administration since it launched its crackdown on dissent in 2018. Describing the report as the first attempt to begin documenting illegal seizures by the Ortega government since 2018, Opta puts the value of these properties at more than US$250m in total. However, it said that this is just the “tip of the iceberg” given the paucity of information available and the reluctance of victims to come forward, faced with the threat of repression.

Underlining that property seizures have intensified since February 2023, when over 220 political prisoners were released, sent to the US, and subsequently stripped of their citizenship and assets [SSR-23-04], Opta draws parallels between the current wave of confiscations and “La Piñata”, a massive transfer of titling of confiscated and expropriated property to the FSLN leadership which occurred at the end of Ortega’s first mandate (1979-1990). The US State Department has estimated that some 28,000 foreign-owned and Nicaraguan-owned properties were expropriated under La Piñata.

Targeting the church

According to the CDHNN+ statement released on 14 November, over 1,262 religious organisations have been closed down since 2018. It adds that between 2018 and 2024, over 870 attacks have been carried out by the authorities against the Catholic Church while at least 22 religious media have been shuttered.

President of episcopal conference expelled

With the Catholic Church and other religious organisations among those targeted with property seizures, the recent expulsion to Guatemala of the Bishop of Jinotega, Carlos Enrique Herrera Gutiérrez, who is the president of Nicaragua’s episcopal conference (CEN), is a further sign of the government’s continued crackdown on the Church which has escalated this year [SSR-24-09].

Herrera’s expulsion on 13 November follows those of Bishops Rolando Álvarez and Isidoro Mora, who were exiled this year to Rome, having been detained (and in Álvarez’s case, sentenced to prison) on charges widely considered trumped up. Another bishop, the auxiliary bishop of Managua, Silvio José Báez, was forced into exile in 2019 after receiving death threats.

According to a statement released on 14 November by rights NGO, Colectivo de Derechos Humanos Nicaragua Nunca Más (CDHNN+), Herrera was expelled after reportedly criticising noisy events on 10 November organised by Leónidas Centeno Rivera, the FSLN mayor of Jinotega, which disrupted religious services.

Meanwhile, the latest tally posted on social media on 14 November by Martha Patricia Molina, a Nicaraguan researcher in exile who documents church repression by the authorities, estimates that 261 religious figures have been exiled since April 2018, of whom 55 were exiled this year. These include 141 priests and 99 nuns.