Nicaraguan dictatorship closes 100 more NGOs, total reaches 2,735

The Ministry of the Interior of Nicaragua canceled this Friday the registration of legal entities of other 200 NGOs, bringing the total to 2.735 organizations of this type dissolved after the popular uprising of April 2021, qualified as a coup attempt by the government of dictator Daniel Ortega.

The interdiction of

non-governmental organizations, 98 national and two foreign, was approved by the Minister of the Interior, María Amelia Coronel, according to the ministerial agreement published in the Official Gazette, “La Gaceta”.

According to the Ministry of the Interior, the 24 local NGOs did not fulfill their obligations, including the non-disclosure of its boards of directors and financial statements for periods of between five and 24 years, as well as information on the identity and origin of all its members and donors.

The two foreign NGOs, one from Costa Rica and the other from the United States, weredissolved on the grounds that they were abandoned and had between six and years of non-compliance with their obligations.

The Executive of Ortega, with the vote of Sandinista deputies and their allies in the National Assembly, or through the Ministry of the Interior, has banned at least 2.735 Nicaraguan and foreign NGOs since December 2018.

Of this total, 2.611 were made illegal as of March this year, according to 18 organizations that denounced last Thursday in a public hearing before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) the “extreme situation in relation to the systematic violation of the right to freedom of association and the right to defend human rights in Nicaragua”.

Sandinista deputies such as Filiberto Rodríguez said that the affected NGOs used funds from the donations they received to try to overthrow Ortega in the demonstrations that broke out in April 2018, although not

In April 2018, thousands of Nicaraguans took to the streets to protest the controversial social security reform, which later became a movement for Ortega’s resignation after the president forcefully suppressed the demonstrations.

The protests left at least 355 dead, according to the IACHR, although local organizations raise the number to 684, while the government recognizes 200.

The Sandinistas also argued that the illegalization of these NGOs makes part of a legal process, as not all of the more than 6.000 registered NGOs were operating.

Nicaragua has been going through a political and social crisis since April 2018, which was accentuated after the controversial elections of November 7, 2021, in which Ortega was supposedly re-elected for a fifth term, the fourth in a row and the second together with his wife, Rosario Murillo, as vice president, with his main adversaries rivers in prison or exile.

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