Ortega’s Fancy for Stealing Women’s Property Spreads
Members of The police broke the windows and doors in order to enter illegally.
HAVANA TIMES – On June 10 in the early hours of the morning, police agents in the service of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo forcefully took over the installations of the Colectivo de Mujeres 8 de Marzo [“March 8 Women’s Collective”] in the municipality of Esquipulas, Matagalpa.
“It’s an outrage against the rights of women and adolescents in the rural areas of Esquipulas,” the women affected declared in repudiation of the theft of their organization’s facilities.
For their part, the group Articulacion de Movimientos Sociales [“Network of Social Movements”] denounced the arbitrary abduction of the offices belonging to the March 8 Collective and demanded an end to the Ortega-Murillo regime’s outrages against Nicaraguan women.
The Esquipulas women’s organization had been working for 26 years in support of the rural women of the municipality. During this time, they estimate they attended some 10,800 women and nearly a thousand girls.
On March 16, the Nicaraguan National Assembly cancelled the legal status of the March 8 Women’s Collective and that of another 24 organizations, under the argument that these associations didn’t report their financial status as required.
The regime has closed a total of 3,400 organizations of this type since the popular protests that broke out in April 2018. According to the Sandinista deputies who dominate the National Assembly the outlawing of these NGOs forms part of a process of ordering, since not all the 7,227 organizations registered in Nicaragua up until 2018 were actually functioning. However, these claims flew in the face of concrete evidence that many of these organizations were fully active and had in fact made every attempt to turn in full financial reports. None of the 3,400 organizations were allowed any defense or recourse to appeal.
Thousands of Nicaarguans went out onto the streets in April 2018 to protest against a set of controversial reforms to the Social Security laws. When the government responded with violent repression, the protests became a demand for Ortega to step down. The government repression of these protests left hundreds dead, thousands wounded and tens of thousands in exile.
Since that time, Nicaragua has been experiencing a political and social crisis that intensified since the controversial general elections of November 2021, in which Daniel Ortega assured his own reelection for a fifth term, four of them consecutive, and a second ruling period with his wife Rosario Murillo as vice president. Currently, his principal political opponents are either in prison or exile.