Nicaragua’s parliament, which dominates The government of Daniel Ortega, decides this Tuesday the closure of the country’s Academy of Language, indicated along with 82 other non-profit organizations of breaking the law by not declaring himself a “foreign agent,” according to the agenda of legislative sessions.
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The Nicaraguan Academy of Language, based in Managua, was created in August 1928, and its prominent members include the writer Sergio Ramírez and the novelist and poet Gioconda Belli, both based in Spain.
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The proposal for the cancellation of 83 NGOs, which includes the Academy, was presented by the president of the Justice and Governance Commission, Sandinista Filiberto Rodríguez, who points out in the presentation of reasons they did not register as “foreign agents”, which they are required by law to do.
The Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) expressed on Monday its “deep concern about the news of the possible closure” of its Nicaraguan counterpart, “which will cause its disappearance after 94 years of service to the nation’s greatest cultural value.”
The Spanish entity stressed that the Nicaraguan Academy “is essential for the care of the language” and “carries out tireless work for the direct benefit of the people, who are the owners of the language.”
It also mentions that as a member of the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language (ASALE), the Nicaraguan branch fulfills the function of “promoting the common language as the best instrument for dialogue, harmony and understanding between brother peoples.”
In similar terms, the academies of the Language of Chile, Argentina and Ecuador pronounced themselves.
‘Not even Somoza did it’
Gioconda Belli said on Twitter that despite the 94 years of existence “now they come out with the fact that they have not met the requirements and that they will suspend the legal status of an academy that is apolitical by nature. Not even Somoza did“.
He thus alluded to the Somoza dictatorship, which ruled the destinies of Nicaragua with an iron hand between 1937 and 1979, when it was defeated by the Sandinista revolution led by Ortega and which had the now exiled Sergio Ramírez among its figures.
The Nicaraguan Academy of Language has legal status since 1928!! And now they come out with the fact that they have not met the requirements and that they will suspend the status of an academy that is apolitical by nature. Not even Somoza did @ReporteNi
— Gioconda Belli (@GiocondaBelliP) May 29, 2022
At the end of 2020, the government approved a law that obliges civil society organizations and legal entities that receive funds from abroad to register as foreign agents and to account for how they spend the money or how they use the donations they receive.
With these 83 NGOs, it increases to more than 200 entities canceled by the Ortega government since 2018in the context of the crisis triggered by the anti-government protests, which left a balance of more than 355 dead and thousands of exiles.
The government accuses these organizations, including human rights defenders, of using the donations received to try to overthrow their government with the support of the United States.
The 76-year-old president, who was part of the first Sandinista government junta in 1979, and then was president between 1985 and 1990, returned to power in 2007, where he remains after obtaining a fourth consecutive term in the November elections, with his imprisoned rivals.
The Ecuadorian pronouncement
It will cause its disappearance after 94 years of service to the greatest cultural value of the nation
The Ecuadorian institution said in a statement that “this outrage betrays the humanist, intellectual and libertarian legacy of emblematic names of Hispanic-American culture that were born in the lands of Nicaragua, including Rubén Darío, Ernesto Cardenal, Pablo Antonio Cuadra or José Coronel Urtecho.” .
“We call to denounce this aggression against the Nicaraguan Academy of Language in all political, social and cultural spheres,” said the statement from the Ecuadorian Academy, signed by its director, Susana Cordero de Espinosa, and by its secretary, Francisco Proaño.
Likewise, he exhorted to “point out in these spheres the dictatorial nature of one more measure, among others, that the military regime of that country has been perpetrating, focused on abusing and suppressing the freedoms and legitimate rights of that brother people.”
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
*With information from EFE and AFP
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