The Society of Jesus confirmed that Nicaraguan police on Saturday expelled from a Jesuit headquarters six priests who ran a university that the Nicaraguan government closed and confiscated on Tuesday.
In a statement, the Directives of the Society of Jesus of Central America said it “condemns this affront,” which takes place after the closure and confiscation of all assets of the University of Central America (UCA, in its Spanish acronym) in Nicaragua. . Jesuit priests offered the title deeds to the police and justice officials, saying that the property was not owned by the union contractors, but they were ignored and forced out of the house, and the Society of Jesus lamented.
The statement stressed that “the six members of the community obeyed the orders of authority and withdrew,” adding that “the expelled Jesuits are well and in a safe place.” The priests moved to the community of San Ignacio, from a Jesuit school in Managua, reported the Confidencial news portal, which is run by Carlos Fernando Chamorro, a journalist forced into exile and whose citizenship the government has seen revoked.
Also on Saturday, the UCA Student Defense Movement reported on social network X (formerly Twitter) that the police had arrested Adela Espinosa Tercero, one of the student leaders in the 2018 protests against the regime of President Daniel Ortega.
On Friday, the Nicaraguan government published, in the Official Gazette, an order from the Ministry of the Interior approving the extinction of the University of Central Asia and the confiscation of all its assets, claiming that the university, the focus of the 2018 protests, “functions as follows: a center for terrorism.” Colombia’s Foreign Ministry on Saturday expressed its “concern” over the confiscation of the Central Asian Federation, and strongly condemned “all measures that limit religious, academic and freedom of expression” in Nicaragua.
In response, Nicaragua’s business ministry dismissed what it called Colombia’s “interventionist attitude”, calling it “impudence and vulgar ignorance”. Since December 2021, at least 26 universities – including seven foreign universities – have been closed and their assets seized by order of the Ortega government, with procedures similar to those used with UCA.
In April, the Vatican closed its embassy in Nicaragua after the country’s government suspended diplomatic relations. Nicaragua has been going through a political and social crisis since April 2018, which worsened after the controversial elections in November 2021, in which Ortega was elected to a fifth term, for the fourth time in a row and the second with his wife, Rosario Murillo, as deputy. The president and his main opponents are in prison.
Ortega, 77, has been in power for 16 years and six months straight and has been the target of accusations of authoritarianism and election fraud.
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