Ads Top

"His silence reverberates": Criticism of Pope Francis is mounting for his inaction in the face of the persecution of the Church in Nicaragua


The regime of Daniel Ortega closed down radio stations owned by the Catholic Church, in the midst of an escalation of repression; several organisms request a condemnation of the Pontiff.

The numerous shots and smoke from police tear gas revived the memory of the repression of the massive 2018 protests in Nicaragua. On Monday, at the gates of the Niño Jesús de Praga chapel, located in the city of Sébaco, in Matagalpa, dozens of followers gathered at the request for help from the priest Uriel Vallejos.

"We are being besieged," warns a person on the scene, recorded in a video posted on the official Facebook account of the diocese. “They did not care that there were young people and children. None of the brothers carry weapons or anything like that. Even so, [the police officers] have fired shots into the air and tear gas.”

The police and parastatal agents of the government of Daniel Ortega burst into the temple armed with the aim of seizing the Church's radio transmission equipment. The witnesses assured that they destroyed walls, ceilings, and forced the priest Vallejos to seek refuge, arrested dozens of young people and brutally repressed those present. The siege of the chapel is part of the repressive escalation of the Sandinista dictatorship against the Catholic Church, an increasingly violent campaign that has mobilized the international community. But, on this issue, the silence of a key figure is increasingly striking: Pope Francis.

“The magnitude and seriousness of the human rights crisis in Nicaragua requires an unequivocal pronouncement by any person committed to human rights. Pope Francis is one of the few people who could start a dialogue with the Ortega regime," argued Tamara Taraciuk Broner, deputy director for the Americas at Human Rights Watch (HRW), in an interview with La Nación.

“His silence, even in the midst of a ferocious onslaught against the Church in Nicaragua, sends a terrible message. In a Catholic country like Nicaragua, a condemnation by Francis of the regime's atrocities would not only be a blow to Ortega. It would also be, even more important, a recognition of the struggle of the Nicaraguan people for democracy and justice and support for the unanimous demand of the victims and their families for the release of the political prisoners of the regime”, added Taraciuk Broner.

It is already the third letter that Álvaro Leiva Sánchez, general secretary of the Nicaraguan Association for Human Rights (ANPDH), sends to the Pontiff to document the persecution of Christians. “There are few things as deafening as silence. And from 2018 to today, his resounds in the lacerated heart of the Catholic people of Nicaragua”, wrote Sánchez.

The Pope has already been harshly questioned by Nicaraguan opponents in the past. One case occurred in 2019, after having ordered the incorporation into the Vatican of Monsignor Silvio José Báez, a symbol of the popular rebellion, who assured then that he had not "asked to leave" the country, and whose departure was considered a "forced exile" arranged by Rome.

Meanwhile, members of the international community raise their voices against the Ortega dictatorship. The bishop of the Diocese of Matagalpa, Rolando Álvarez, a staunch critic of Sandinismo, denounced on Monday the closure of five radio stations in his diocese that operated under his jurisdiction. The authorities of the Nicaraguan Institute of Telecommunications and Nicaraguan Post excused the fact by saying that their operating licenses were not valid.

This Thursday, the European Union (EU) condemned the "arbitrary" closure of the stations and assured that it is "a new violation of freedom of expression and freedom of religion or belief."

“Since 2018, the Nicaraguan government has unleashed unprecedented levels of violence against its own people, using assassinations, enforced disappearances, imprisonment, harassment, and intimidation against political opponents, as well as journalists, human rights defenders, religious leaders, and others,” lashed out in a statement Peter Stano, spokesman for the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell.

In June, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, warned that Sandinismo is accentuating the repression of society and that "since May, the police have resumed harassing Catholic priests, persistently following and intimidating them."

War against the church
The tension between the Church and Sandinism led Catholic churches to give shelter to protesters in the protests that broke out against the government in 2018. The church has also tried to act as a gauge to favor dialogue between the opposition and the ruling party, without success.

In less than four years, the Nicaraguan Church suffered 190 attacks and desecrations, including death threats, looting of churches and attacks with Molotov cocktails, according to the investigation "Nicaragua: a persecuted church?" of the lawyer Martha Molina Montenegro.

Recently, the Ortega regime immediately expelled from the country the Vatican nuncio, Monsignor Waldemar Sommertag, and 18 nuns of the Mother Teresa Order of Calcutta, for considering the Catholic entity as part of the "opposition and putschist."

“The violent and illegal action of State agents is part of the persecution against the Catholic Church, with which hatred and revenge are discharged because the Church is firmly committed to the population oppressed by a state of terror that more than four years ago maintains a systematic persecution with serious human rights violations and crimes against humanity, until now in total impunity," denounced the human rights group "Nicaragua Nunca +", an NGO based in Costa Rica that documents human rights violations in Nicaragua.

Bullies happen daily. Monsignor Álvarez, a victim of persecution and aggression, denounced that several members of the police had tried to completely block the street to prevent him from accessing his curia and his home, "as if we were criminals," he said.

The repressive script of Ortega's partner and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, has remained firm since the 2018 protests, where police abuses - still unpunished - left 309 dead. The severe restrictions on freedom of expression have arbitrarily canceled the legal status of more than a thousand national and international NGOs and have arrested and prosecuted lawyers, peasant representatives, businessmen, student leaders and journalists -at least 100 have been forced into exile-, according to the latest HRW report.

In 2021, the Ortega regime -in power since 2007- ordered the arbitrary arrests of seven presidential candidates and 32 well-known critics of the government between the end of May and October, ahead of the November presidential elections in which the Ortegas secured a fourth term, in an election considered a "farce" by many countries in the region.

Source: La Nación
Powered by Blogger.