The persecution of the Ortega and Murillo regime in Holy Week leaves 20 detainees in Nicaragua

The religious persecution that the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo intensified during the first days of April has left at least 20 Nicaraguans detained, especially during Holy Week, when the police prohibited processions and Catholic traditions.

The data on the arrests is provided by opposition organizations, which classify them as "kidnappings", and who registered the sieges against parishes and the performance of intramural rites in temples.

The Blue and White Monitoring organization reports 35 incidents of human rights violations during Holy Week, one of the most revered and felt by Catholicism.

These include five cases of police harassment and nine incidents of territorial control by officers to boycott the processions.

In addition, they highlight the expulsion from the country of the Panamanian priest Donaciano Alarcón.

The parish priest was captured and the immigration authorities left him barefoot on the border with Honduras for asking for the release of Bishop Rolando Álvarez, sentenced to 26 years in prison.

“Among the events to highlight are three incidents and the arrest of a journalist.

At least nine arrests of parishioners who participated in Holy Week festivities ”, exposes the Blue and White Monitoring.

The detained journalist is Víctor Ticay, a collaborator of Channel 10, an open signal, who covered the tradition of La Reseña in the municipality of Nandaime, in southern Nicaragua.

The religious event became relevant because the devotees circumvented the fence of officials.

Ticay posted everything on his Facebook page and was arrested for it.

Then the video that he broadcast was deleted from his social page.

The Organization of Independent Journalists and Communicators of Nicaragua (PCIN) denounced the "arbitrary and illegal" detention of the journalist and assures that he was transferred to the Directorate of Judicial Assistance, El Chipote, in Managua.

However, so far the police have not reported the arrest.

The Ortega y Murillo regime prohibited the Stations of the Cross during Lent from mid-February and later extended the restriction to all Easter events.

The Catholic hierarchy in Nicaragua complied with the order announced by the police and canceled the traditional national pilgrimages, held before Holy Week.

The parish priests ordered their faithful to carry out their acts of faith inside the temples, but that did not prevent the police harassment from abating.

However, it was not only in the city of Nandaime that the devotees rebelled: In the departments of Masaya, Granada, and Chinandega, young men dressed in robes and carrying crosses defied the officials by recreating the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus in the streets.

In the small and hot municipality of Ranchería, in the west of the country, the faithful protested against the riot police and surrounded the police patrol demanding the prohibition of the traditional exit of the Jews.

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Police chase a procession in Nicaragua |

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Police chase a procession of Nazarenes in Managua. Video: RR SS

The persecution was so great that Pope Francis mentioned Nicaragua in his Easter message at the Mass on Easter Sunday, during his traditional "urbi et orbi" ("to the city and the world") blessing.

The pontiff referred to the conflicts affecting the planet and prayed for all those who are prevented from freely and publicly professing their faith.

"Support, Lord, the Christian communities that today celebrate Easter in particular circumstances, such as in Nicaragua and Eritrea, and remember all those who are prevented from freely and publicly professing their faith," he implored.

Religious persecution has included the closure of Catholic media outlets, the expulsion of priests and nuns, and the unilateral suspension of diplomatic relations with the Holy See, after Francis branded the Ortega y Murillo regime a Hitler dictatorship.

April, hot month

The Urnas Abiertas organization maintained that the religious persecution during Holy Week brought more intimidation and the siege was even throughout almost the entire national territory.

The organization anticipates that the harassment will persist in Nicaragua as the month of April passes, especially from the 18th, when the fifth anniversary of the social protests that cornered the presidential couple is celebrated.

Since 2018, the regime has redoubled the police state in April to avoid any type of commemoration or allusion to the popular movement that was appeased with lethal violence by police and Sandinista paramilitaries.

At least 355 people were executed, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

Thousands were arrested and hundreds convicted in political trials, while to date some 300,000 Nicaraguans have fled or gone into exile from political violence and the economic crisis, in an unprecedented exodus only comparable to that of the 1980s, when the country was plunged into a civil war.

Recently, the report of the Group of Experts on Human Rights on Nicaragua (Ghren, for its acronym in English) concluded that Ortega and Murillo were responsible for the commission of crimes against humanity from 2018 to date.

Experts have urged the international community to activate international justice against the presidential couple, while Ghren's mandate was renewed by the United Nations to deepen repressive chains of command, including an investigation into the role of the Nicaraguan Army.

In exile in Miami, the Auxiliary Bishop of Managua, Silvio Báez, celebrated the Resurrection Mass and recalled that the stones from the tomb were removed by Jesus.

“On the road to their liberation, the peoples are blocked not only by the enormous stones of the cruelty of the tyrants, but also by the stones of the indifference of the egoists, the envy among the leaders and the hopelessness of the people tired of suffering. .

But all those stones can be removed”, encouraged the prelate.

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