The Nicaraguan Congress closed this Wednesday 14 associations and universities, including the Managua Polytechnic, a symbol of the protests that put the president’s government in check Daniel Ortega in 2018a measure considered by its critics as an “extermination strategy”.
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During the session of Parliament, with an official majority, the legal personality of these institutions, linked to the Catholic Church and higher education, was withdrawn at the request of the Ministry of the Interior, which accuses them of failing to comply with transparency regulations.
The measure implies the closure of functions. Among the suspended study houses is the Polytechnic University of Managua (UPOLI), where hundreds of students barricaded themselves during massive protests against a social security reform in April 2018, triggering a political crisis that still persists.
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The other closed educational institutions are the Catholic Agricultural University of the Tropics (Ucatse); Nicaraguan Popular University (UPONIC), Paulo Freire University (UPF) and Nicaraguan University of Humanitarian Studies (UNEH).
Also nine other private associations. According to the Ministry of the Interior, these entities, which include several Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), have breached and hindered the law that governs the control and surveillance of non-profit civil associations, which promotes a lack of transparency of the funds they receive.
Without the corresponding reports, the ministry assures, the authority cannot identify who its representative and associates are, which violates the law. The closure of these five universities, three in Managua, one in Estelí (north) and another in Carazo (southwest), led to the condemnation of students who “remain in limbo” to continue their education, student leader Dolly told AFP Blackberry.
All this is happening while in Nicaragua more than 40 imprisoned opponents are being put on trial, whom the government accuses of conspiring against the country and promoting a coup against Ortega, sponsored by Washington.
Most of the arrests of opponents, including seven former presidential hopefuls, occurred months before Ortega, a former guerrilla in power since 2007, won his fourth consecutive term in the November elections.
hit on students
Mora, who participated in the 2018 protests, expressed his “outrage” at the closure of the study houses, and “particularly at UPOLI, because it is a symbol of resistance, of the April struggle.”
In 2018, hundreds of students barricaded themselves for almost two months in the UPOLI classrooms, under siege by the police who were trying to evict them, Mora recalled.
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“There is a lot of uncertainty in the university, the students receive this as a very strong blow,” said Mora, who was expelled from UPOLI in 2020, which she attributed to a political issue.
The student representative to the Civic Alliance for Justice and Democracy (ACJD) Yunova Acosta described the action of Congress as “arbitrary” because “with it, many young people were deprived of the opportunity to continue their studies. We are concerned about the uncertainty.”
‘scorched earth’
The Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (Cenidh) condemned the closure of the 14 associations and universities and accused the government of applying a “generalized extermination strategy” in a “perverse” manner.
He compared it to the way of acting during the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza -which Ortega himself helped to overthrow- what “in a context of war (in 1979) was called scorched earth.”
The Cenidh, which was also banned in 2018, considered that “this is a provocation, a direct and cowardly attack against youth, the same one that rose up demanding justice, democracy and human rights in April 2018.” The Cenidh also registers it as “a violation of the right to education and freedom of thought.”
The “Nicaragua Never Again” Human Rights Collective, in exile, accused the government of trying to impose “a single teaching and thought model” to contribute to “the perpetuity of power.”
For its part, the state National Council of Universities (CNU), the governing body of higher education, promised to guarantee the academic continuity of the students of the canceled universities.
More than 80 non-governmental organizations linked to activities for the promotion and defense of human rights, health, education, culture, among others, have been outlawed in the context of the political crisis that the country has been experiencing since 2018.
AFP
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