Ortega and Murillo’s law of the jungle is bringing public servants, civilian and military, to their knees, now hostages of the regime.
*CLIP usually only publishes investigations, but on extraordinary occasions such as this one, when a government has stripped hundreds of prominent citizens of their nationality, including several journalists, we republish the editorial of Carlos Fernando Chamorro, founding director of Confidencial de Nicaragua, and victim of this attack. His demand for a free society is that of thousands of his compatriots who today cry out for the truth to be known and for liberty to be recovered.
First came the assault against the 222 former political prisoners who last Thursday were stripped of their citizenship and inalienable rights and banished to the United States.
A day later, bishop of Matagalpa, Monsignor Rolando Alvarez, was sentenced to 26 years and four months in prison for the alleged crime of “conspiracy against national sovereignty”, because he refused to be banished. He was confined to a maximum-security cell in “La Modelo” prison.
In this way, Daniel Ortega has undone with one hand what he had done with the other, when he had attempted to ease the dictatorship’s international isolation by unilaterally releasing prisoners of conscience.
Leaving no doubt as to the leap into the void of its authoritarian radicalization, this Wednesday, February 15th, the family dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo ordered 94 citizens to be stripped of their citizenship. Among them were Bishop Silvio José Báez, writers Sergio Ramírez and Gioconda Belli, human rights defender Vilma Núñez de Escorcia, businessman Gerardo Baltodano, farming leader Francisca Ramírez, myself and my wife Desirée Elizondo, and many more —a true sample of the plurality of political activists, civic, academic, and religious leaders, journalists, intellectuals, and former public servants. The intention is to strip us of our inalienable rights as citizens and, in passing, carry out a massive confiscation of assets as revenge.
Each of these criminal actions, the stripping of citizenship, the imposition of sentences in perpetuity, and the confiscation of assets, are strictly prohibited by the Constitution of the Republic. Dictators Ortega and Murillo are only reaffirming that for many years Nicaragua has ceased to be a society governed by law and the Constitution, in which revenge and hatred rule over citizens who aspire to live in a free and democratic society. However, those who shamelessly act as pawns of Vladimir Putin, the invader of Ukraine, will never be able to strip us of our nationality.
The dictatorship’s actions not only punish these 94 citizens, who now join the 222 political prisoners stripped of their citizenship and rights, as well as bishop Álvarez; they punish all economic and social sectors of the country, including public servants, which are demanding change through justice and freedom.
Everyone in Nicaragua knows that the only plotters and traitors to the homeland are Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, who have demolished democracy, mortgaged national sovereignty with Chinese businessman Wang Jing, massacred the people in the civic protests of 2018, annulled political competition in the electoral farce of 2021, and now lead us to a future without peace or economic progress, in which there will be neither stability nor a political solution to the national crisis, with a family dictatorship that intends to enthrone itself in power as a dynasty.
With these three punitive measures, Ortega and Murillo have taken to the extreme the degradation of the Supreme Court of Justice, the Attorney General’s Office, the Police, the Ministries of the Interior and Foreign Affairs, and practically the entire State of Nicaragua, bringing to their knees those public servants, civilian and military, who bear no responsibilities in the repression and corruption, and who are now also hostages of the dictatorship.
By imposing the law of the jungle, Ortega and Murillo are digging their own grave; they are exhibiting the enormous political weakness of their regime before their own supporters. Both the punishments in perpetuity and the 26-year prison sentence of Monsignor Rolando Alvarez are insane delusions of the ruling family, and the reality is that the time and viability of the dictatorial regime are running out. Nicaragua needs urgent change. A change with democracy and justice without impunity, in which all the living forces of the country contribute to bury the hatred, the thirst for revenge, and the public corruption symbolized by the Ortega and Murillo family-state.
Like all 94 condemned citizens, like the 222 released from prison who represent the hope for democratic change, and with the spiritual strength of Monsignor Rolando Alvarez, we reject with all our strength the attempt to strip us of our citizenship and national rights. And we call on all Nicaraguans, especially public servants, to break the silence, to denounce corruption, and not to obey orders born of a corrupt and immoral dictatorship. The twilight of the dictatorship signals the time for public servants, civilian and military, to begin to be part of a national solution.
Meanwhile, it is up to us journalists to do more and better journalism, to continue to investigate and tell the truth, which also includes the political, economic, and moral failure of the dictatorship, until —as my father proclaimed in 1959 from prison, when he also rejected his conviction for “treason” by the Somoza dictatorship—, “Nicaragua will be again a Republic”.
