The Ortega and Murillo regime dissolves the Nicaraguan Red Cross and confiscates its assets

Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, in a file photo. Europa Press/Contact Information/Xin Yuewei

The regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo has ordered the dissolution of the Nicaraguan Red Cross, a humanitarian organization created in 1931, when the city of Managua was shaken by an earthquake and then razed by a fire. The first secretary of Parliament, Sandinista deputy Lorna Dixon, sent on Wednesday a bill that not only repeals the founding decree of the agency, but also orders the confiscation of the assets of the association and "transfer" them to the Ministry of Health (Minsa).

Sandinismo's main argument is that the Nicaraguan Red Cross is governed by the "fundamental principles of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, which include humanity, impartiality and neutrality." The regime alleges that the Nicaraguan association "acted against those principles" in 2018, the year of massive social protests against the presidential couple. At that time, the humanitarian organization took to the streets to heal and attend to the thousands of wounded left by police and paramilitary repression.

"In the acts that occurred in 2018 that undermined the peace and stability of the nation, some subsidiaries of this Association acted against these principles and its Constitutive Act and Statutes; and the Association itself transgressed the laws of the country by ignoring and even supporting this action of its subsidiaries," says the document approved by Sandinista legislators.

The Government also maintains that the Nicaraguan Red Cross has failed to comply with "its duties and obligations established in Law No. 1115, General Law on the Regulation and Control of Non-Profit Organizations (OSFL)", by not submitting "financial statements, balance sheet, tax declaration, lack of verification of its donors and donors, outdated information in the registry of the Ministry of the Interior". That is, the same allegations that the Ortega and Murillo regime has made against the 3,290 Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) that have beheaded since 2018 for not submitting to the Foreign Agents Law, one of the regulations to silence and dismantle civil society.

"This is the last straw, another attempt to control absolutely everything that happens in Nicaragua. This violates international regulations and the international principles of the Red Cross," Ana Quirós, an expert in public health and a denationalized feminist, told EL PAÍS. "By becoming a government body, it ceases to be really the Red Cross, which is an organization that must be, firstly, apolitical and secondly must be independent. Thirdly, it must be non-discriminatory. And what we know about the Ministry of Health and the attitude of the government is the opposite."

Confiscation of property

Next, in article 3 of the repeal law, the Government orders the confiscation of all the assets of the Nicaraguan Red Cross, but overlaps it with the term "transfer of property". "All the heritage, assets and shares that to date belong to the National Association called Nicaraguan Red Cross will become the property of the State, and will be administered by the Nicaraguan Red Cross, a decentralized entity attached to the Ministry of Health (MINSA)," establish the Sandinista legislators.

After dissolving the association, the deputies created another figure that will be controlled by the State, under the following argument: "Since 2007 the Government of Reconciliation and National Unity has been strengthening the Family and Community Health Model (MOSAFC), guaranteeing a comprehensive approach, with the protagonism of families, ensuring health from the beginning of life, childhood, adolescence and adulthood, making families active subjects in the social construction of their own health. This is the spirit that ensures the health of Nicaraguans in Nicaragua from a Christian, Socialist and Solidarity Model."

The International Red Cross has tried to be a humanitarian mediator in the socio-political crisis in Nicaragua, relying on the association now dissolved, especially on issues related to political prisoners. However, Ortega and Murillo's anger against the international institution has as a precedent not only to deny him entry to prisons, but in March 2022 they expelled the head of mission Thomas Ess, without informing the reason for the decision.

The cancellation of the Red Cross of Nicaragua interrupts more than a dozen projects and humanitarian courses that develop in indigenous communities, issues of prevention of violence, food insecurity, drought, and the analysis of human biological samples that contribute to the study, prevention, diagnosis and treatment of diseases in their laboratories throughout the country.

"The most serious thing is that through the Red Cross one could have some kind of service, maybe not medical care, but transfers in cases of emergencies. But when it becomes part of the Ministry of Health, it loses all independence. If we were in a situation like that of 2018, the Red Cross would also be prevented from even transferring injured people or denying them care, as the public health system did with the demonstrators," says Quirós.

Suspended defender of political prisoners

One day before dissolving the humanitarian association, the judiciary dictated Ortega-Murillo definitively the exercise of the professions of lawyer and notary public" to the jurist Yonarqui Martínez. The provision has been published in a circular that also declares "null" the title of this professional who has dedicated herself to the defense of political prisoners in Nicaragua.

In recent weeks, Martínez has denounced the hunt against opponents and the express processes against them, whom Sandinista judges have accused of political crimes, such as "undermining national sovereignty" and "spreading false news."

The definitive suspension of the title of lawyer for Martínez is another blow against constitutional rights, which adds to the stripping of nationality of 222 Nicaraguans, decisions that lack legal support. It is not the first time that lawyers and jurists have been suspended for political reasons. Those who have been affected, however, have decided not to report for fear of reprisals.

"There are precedents in which lawyers have been suspended, as is the case of Dr. Orietta Benavides and defense lawyer Manuel Urbina Lara. Both were arbitrarily dismissed for simply exercising their work as defenders and shows how in Nicaragua there is a disrespect for the specific procedures established, both in the current notarial legislation and in the issue of the administrative judicial career," Braulio Abarca, a human rights defender exiled in Costa Rica, told EL PAÍS.

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