How Nicaragua Became and Sustains a Police State
From the April 2018 explosion to deafening silence
In its attempt to silence the 2018 protests a police memorandum forbid them. Seven years later, the country’s police state apparatus keeps watch and persecutes, under a cloak of normality.
HAVANA TIMES – Behind the apparent calm on the streets of Nicaragua lies a hidden repressive apparatus of control and fear. Seven years after a police memorandum attempted to silence the April protests, the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo maintains a de facto police state disguised as peace, well-being, and normality. Their apparatus for surveillance and persecution has forced the population to refrain from discussing topics the government disapproves of, even among relatives and friends. The repression has also systematically extended into the legal, social, and even transnational arena.
In this special report, Confidencial documents the chronology of how the de facto police state was built and how it’s maintained in Nicaragua.
The official narrative, as promoted in the pro-government media and in “made-to-order” surveys, portrays a supposed approval rate of 86% for Ortega and Murillo. Meanwhile, any dissent is smeared as “Coup-promotion.”In her daily monologue, Murillo constantly evokes the image of a “blessed” Nicaragua, while sponsoring thousands of cultural and recreational activities every weekend to keep the population distracted within a false calm.
The repression has achieved its main objective: to create a climate of fear and self-censorship. The threat of losing freedom, nationality, or personal property has silenced the vast majority of the population. The dictatorship also manipulates the situation to its advantage, claiming that actions such as banning religious processions are public safety decisions to avoid confrontation, when in fact they are just another act of censorship and control.
Chronology of the police state in Nicaragua
After issuing a police statement banning protests on September 28, 2018, the regime focused on eliminating any form of organization and dissent. Initially, repression took the form of physical violence. The first march, two days after the ban, was violently suppressed.
In response, the population organized “flash demonstrations,” “express sit-ins,” and small acts of citizen resistance, such as releasing blue and white balloons or confetti into the streets, putting up stickers, hanging banners, or bringing water to the mothers of political prisoners who staged a hunger strike in a church surrounded by police. But the strategy of repression evolved further, to deter any citizen action.
Eliminating any counterweight or criticism
The regime has not only resorted to violence, but has also systematically dismantled any counterweight to their authority – closing, attacking, confiscating, and censoring non-profit organizations, universities, and independent media outlets.
That onslaught began in November 2018, when the Nicaraguan National Assembly canceled the legal status of the first eleven NGOs. As of today, over 5,600 NGOs have been cancelled, at least 1,300 of them church-affiliated.
The attack was extended to the independent press with the assault and confiscation of Confidencial and 100% Noticias in December 2018. The criminalization of journalism continued with over 60 citations and interrogations of journalists and media directors in the Attorney General’s office, which led hundreds to flee the country. Nicaragua’s oldest newspaper, La Prensa, with nearly a century of history behind it, was also assaulted and confiscated in August 2021. Today more than 50 media outlets have been shuttered. Some of them have succeeded in maintaining their work from exile, despite further attempts at censorship, such as cancelling the access of independent media websites to the “.ni’ web domain in March 2025.
The goal of silencing all dissent has also extended to the universities and religious institutions. More than thirty private universities—including the Jesuit-run Central American University (UCA)—have been closed and confiscated. Using them as a springboard, the dictatorship has built a lucrative [higher education] business, while promoting partisan indoctrination. Similarly, the Catholic and Evangelical churches have been attacked, persecuted, and confiscated, and their bishops, priests, and pastors have been imprisoned and exiled.
The legal arsenal of repression
The regime has not only used violence, but also instrumentalized the law to build a state of terror, fabricating a legal framework designed to justify repression and persecution against those it labels “traitors to the homeland.” Its true objective is to nullify all checks and balances, in order to exercise absolute power with complete impunity.
In less than six months, between September 2020 and February 2021, the Sandinista controlled legislature passed a dozen repressive laws that suspended the constitutional freedoms and rights of citizens:
• Foreign Agents Law (October 2020): Known as the “Putin Law,” it requires organizations and individuals receiving foreign funding to register as “foreign agents” under threat of fines up to US $500,000. The law forced the closure of several organizations, including the Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation, which was then also persecuted and criminalized for supporting independent media and defending the right to freedom of the press.
• Special Cybercrimes Law (October 2020): Also called the “Gag Law,” it controls internet content with penalties of up to eight years in prison. The regime uses it at its discretion to levy charges of “fake news,” even against well-substantiated denunciations. The law has served to criminalize investigative journalism and give a green light to espionage.
• Revisions to the Criminal Procedure Code (February 2021): Extends the period of detention without charge from 48 hours to 90 days. This change, denounced by human rights defenders, eliminates the principle of presumption of innocence, as a person is “imprisoned and only then investigated.” In practice, the police now arrest entire families and hold dozens of people in conditions of forced disappearance, without accounting for their whereabouts or giving them access to defense and justice.
• Sovereignty Defense Law (December 2020): This law nullifies political competition and prohibits participation in elections by those whom the regime labels as “traitors to the homeland” or “sellouts” for supporting international sanctions.
• Life sentences (January 2021): Approved under the pretext of punishing “hate crimes,” this constitutional amendment establishes life imprisonment. Opponents see it as another strategy to punish those who dare to speak out against the regime.
• The crime of “treason”: The dictatorship also ordered the stripping of Nicaraguan nationality for alleged political crimes, including “treason.” In February 2023, the dictatorship stripped 222 released political prisoners of their nationality, leaving them stateless, after they were loaded onto a plane and banished to the United States. The basis for these measures: a “Special Law Regulating the Loss of Nicaraguan Nationality” or Law 1145, passed on the same day. Five days later, they used it again to strip another 94 opponents and critics of the dictatorship of their nationality and order the confiscation of all their Nicaraguan property. International human rights defenders have warned that no country in the world promotes statelessness like Nicaragua.
Demolition of the rule of law
The above laws marked the prelude to Ortega and Murillo’s final assault on the State. The regime has enacted legal reforms to completely reconfigure the justice system and concentrate power in a totalitarian manner.
• The “Chamuca” (Rosario Murillo designed) Constitution: Between November 2024 and February 2025, the regime approved a “partial” constitutional reform, which in reality modified more than 90% of the articles. The new Magna Carta concentrates almost unlimited powers in the “co-presidency,” and even extends the current presidential term for another year, nullifying the possibility of an electoral process in November 2026. Previously, during the 2021 elections, the regime cancelled the legal status of virtually all the opposition political parties, eliminating electoral competition and imprisoning all opposition pre-candidates, political and civic leaders, whom it then exiled and denationalized.
• Judicial branch totally compromised: To consolidate control, the regime reformed the Comprehensive Judiciary Law and the Judicial Career Law. The legal system has become a body dependent on the Ortega-Murillo “co-presidency,” eliminating the criteria of merit and ability and burying judicial independence.
Repression, the daily bread
The regime’s control is not limited to major laws or institutions; it seeps into the daily lives of citizens, creating a climate of self-censorship and fear. While the majority continue living their normal lives—in silence—for many others, repression is their everyday bread, with constant harassment and surveillance.
Since the ban on marches in September 2018, the police have persecuted citizens for carrying the national flag, raided shopping malls to arrest protesters, harassed mothers for bringing flowers to the graves of their murdered children, and prevented opponents from leaving their homes. Even certain religious processions have been banned since September 2022, eliminating another form of social gathering.
The repression is also often localized, with the aim of silencing any critical voices, whether public figures or ordinary citizens. Among the targets being journalists, doctors, academics, human rights defenders, businesspeople, activists, peasants, bishops and priests, and opposition politicians. The repression has also reached Sandinista militants and past officials of the governing party, and veterans of the anti-Somoza struggle, sending a clear message: criticism will not be tolerated, no matter where it comes from.
Police harassment of the homes of relatives of exiled journalists has increased. Archived Photo: Confidencial
Arbitrary arrests and forced disappearances continue to occur in Nicaragua. Hundreds of families suffer the anguish of not knowing anything about a relative who was taken from their home or workplace one day. They are not even told which prison they are being held in. De facto “house arrest” has also been imposed, without judicial process, on dozens of opposition figures and citizens. Others are obligated to appear for daily check-ins at police stations as a condition for remaining in Nicaragua.
Repression without borders
The Ortega-Murillo regime has extended its repression beyond the borders of Nicaragua, deploying a strategy aimed at harassing, silencing, and punishing dissidence in exile.
A September 2025 report from the Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua (GHREN) identified eight transnational human rights violations committed by the Nicaraguan regime in its attempt to eliminate all forms of opposition.
1. Arbitrary deprivation of nationality: Since 2023, the dictatorship has stripped 452 people of their nationality, declaring them “traitors to the homeland.” Most of them have been left stateless, without the protection of any state.
2. Prohibition of entry into their own country: GHREN has documented 318 cases of Nicaraguans denied entry into their country, forcing them to live in exile in a situation of extreme vulnerability.
3. Denial of passports and destruction of documents: The regime has obstructed or denied access to official documents to exiles, erasing their documentation from civil registries in order to sever their ties to the country and deprive them of their legal identity.
4. Confiscation of property and other assets: Since 2018, and more intensively since 2023, authorities have confiscated homes, businesses, bank accounts, and even pensions from exiles and their families as punishment for their dissent.
5. Surveillance, threats, and harassment: The regime uses an extensive intelligence network that operates beyond Nicaragua’s borders to monitor, harass, discredit, and threaten exiles.
6. Physical violence: The Group of Experts has recorded cases of physical violence, including murders and attempted murders, against Nicaraguans exiled in countries such as Costa Rica and Honduras.
7. Improper use of international control mechanisms: The Nicaraguan authorities have abused the Interpol system, and have reported passports as stolen, as a way to obtain the detention of opponents in other countries.
8. Punishment of exiled dissidents’ relatives and associates within the country: Close family members of exiles have been subject to surveillance, harassment, threats, and confiscation of property for the simple fact of being associated with people opposing the government.
Police the pillars of the repression
Control of Nicaragua’s de facto police state rests with the National Police, which has ceased to be a security force and become the regime’s principal repressive armed wing. The institution has concentrated unprecedented power, ensuring total loyalty to the presidential couple.
The growth of the police force has been exponential. Between 2019 and 2021, as the de facto police state consolidated its power, it grew by more than 27% (with 4,000 new officers) and continued to grow.
In just six weeks of early 2025, the dictatorship quintupled the size of its police force, swearing in more than 76,800 hooded men into the “army of Rosario Murillo.” These are not regular members of the police but are dubbed “volunteer police,” bringing to mind the paramilitary groups that suppressed the 2018 protests. This brought the number of police effectives from 20,474 in 2024 to 105,285 in 2025, the highest number in the country’s history.
In February 2025, upon being ratified for a new term as police chief, First Commissioner Francisco Díaz, a relative by marriage of Ortega and Murillo, swore “loyalty and obedience” to the presidential couple, in a clear message that the institution is completely subordinate to political power.
The dictatorship has conferred powers on the police that go beyond public security, turning it into a judicial and economic arm. In August 2025, the dictatorship expanded to a dual police command, appointing police commissioner Juan Victoriano Ruiz Urvina as “co-chief” of police. Ruiz was previously in charge of the feared Managua main jail, known as El Chipote.
On the streets, the Police are the ones responsible for carrying out the repressive actions that disrupt Nicaraguans’ daily life. It’s the agent of arbitrary arrests and forced disappearances, playing a key role in the persecution of the Church, by harassing priests, bishops and the faithful. The agency has been accused both nationally and internationally as being the chief arm of the repression, assuming a role as central pillar of the regime’s totalitarian control and de facto Police State.
First published in Spanish by Confidencial and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.