The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) held a hearing titled “Deterioration of Religious Freedom Conditions in Nicaragua,” where it was reported that the religious repression carried out by the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo against Catholic, Protestant, and Indigenous religious communities has increased exponentially.
During the hearing on Wednesday, July 24, participants included Stephen Schneck, USCIRF Chair; Maureen Ferguson, USCIRF Commissioner; and Christopher Hernandez-Roy, Deputy Director and Senior Researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Also present were Jon Britton Hancock, founder and president of the Mountain Gateway Ministry; Félix Maradiaga, trustee of Freedom House and human rights activist; and Anexa Alfred, member of the United Nations Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, who shared their testimonies.
The participants provided recommendations to the U.S. government under the Biden administration to promote better conditions for religious freedom, help stop the relentless persecution of religious communities in Nicaragua, and hold government officials accountable for violations of religious freedom. They particularly encouraged support for the Nicaragua Sovereignty and Human Rights Restoration Act.
Nicaragua on the List of Countries Violating Religious Freedom
During her intervention, Ferguson emphasized that USCIRF recommends the U.S. Department of State to redesignate Nicaragua as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC), a designation reserved for the worst violators of religious freedom.
“This designation is reserved for the worst violators of religious freedom. In December 2023, we were pleased that the State Department designated Nicaragua as a CPC, and we encourage them to do so again. Therefore, this year USCIRF has recommended that the U.S. government support the United Nations Human Rights Experts Group on Nicaragua, which is carefully documenting the violations of religious freedom occurring in the country,” she detailed.
She also mentioned that they encourage the U.S. government, under the Biden administration, to support the bipartisan legislation, the 2024 Nicaragua Sovereignty and Human Rights Restoration Act, which was introduced in January of this year by the Chair of the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee, Congresswoman María Elvira Salazar, and the Chair of the Human Rights Subcommittee, Representative Chris Smith.
“This legislation would expand the legal grounds for sanctions against violators of freedom in Nicaragua. It would be a step toward greater accountability and would signal that the U.S. government remains deeply concerned about religious freedom,” Ferguson pointed out.
Hernandez-Roy, Deputy Director and Senior Researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, used his participation to offer some suggestions to the U.S. government and highlighted that the deterioration of religious freedom conditions in Nicaragua is having a profound effect on society due to the mass closures of organizations.
“Religious institutions and their leaders are deeply rooted within the community, a characteristic that makes them a threat to the authoritarian political project of the Ortega-Murillo regime. However, this is not new. President Ortega has deep-seated and long-standing grievances against the Catholic Church in particular, for which he has eagerly sought revenge. His intention is to dismantle it through an unrelenting and intense cycle of harassment and persecution as part of his plan to consolidate a dynastic dictatorship within Nicaragua that does not tolerate rivals,” denounced Hernandez-Roy.
He then criticized the imprisonment of evangelical church pastors and the harassment of the Moravian Church, which belongs to Indigenous communities.
“The human rights violations in the country have likely escalated. Finally, the State Department should seek to establish a Rapporteur dedicated to religious freedom within the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, an autonomous body of the Organization of American States (OAS), of which the United States is a member and the main funder,” recommended Hernandez-Roy.
He concluded by stating that the United States “needs a comprehensive theory of change that effectively targets the tools the regime uses to repress its people. This strategy will also require more international cooperation to untangle and dismantle the networks Ortega relies on to preserve his legitimacy and sources of funding.”
Religious Repression Reaches Indigenous Communities
Opposition leader and former political prisoner Félix Maradiaga denounced that after the 2018 anti-government protests, which were brutally suppressed, “religious repression in the country has increased exponentially to unprecedented levels in Latin America. However, it is similar to other totalitarian regimes like China and Cuba.”
Maradiaga emphasized that the Sandinista mode of religious repression is unique because the attacks against the Church are “not based on an explicit attempt to promote atheism, but rather on an obsessive attempt to subjugate and manipulate the faith of Nicaraguans. The hypocritically religious rhetoric of Rosario Murillo and Daniel Ortega has been accompanied by systematic attempts to co-opt the Catholic Church. They have not succeeded, and this is partly one of the reasons for their excessive hatred.”
He then asserted that while the religious persecution against the Catholic Church is “particularly extreme, our brothers from the Moravian and Evangelical churches also suffer persecution.” He detailed how more than 80 priests have been expelled from the country, forced into exile, prevented from re-entering Nicaragua, and, in the worst cases, imprisoned and then sent into exile.
In this regard, Jon Britton Hancock, founder and president of the Mountain Gateway Ministry, denounced during the hearing the imprisonment and sentencing of eleven members of his ministry and the lack of information about their whereabouts.
“We truly love Nicaragua and the Nicaraguan people. It is a beautiful country, and what is happening right now is truly sad and serious. They were arrested for organizing crowds of people together in community and publicly worshiping for religious purposes. The pastors have been in a maximum-security prison for seven months; one of the leaders is a woman who has been illegally separated from her children. Since their arrest seven months ago, they have been deprived of contact with any visitors, including family members and their lawyer,” Hancock described.
The president of the ministry revealed how the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship requested multiple Latin American countries to arrest him, his son, and his daughter-in-law. “Nicaragua coordinated with six countries, as we know, to arrest my son, my daughter-in-law, and me in Mexico, Honduras, Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Brazil. We were never officially notified that there was a problem; they only used press releases to claim that we were involved in a criminal process,” Hancock said.
To conclude, Hancock did not hesitate to assert that “unfortunately, our situation is the latest example of religious persecution by the Ortega-Murillo regime; they target anyone they perceive as a threat to their control of Nicaragua. They did to us what they did to the Catholics and what they have done to more than 3,500 organizations. They reacted abruptly, severely, and unjustly,” he denounced and urged the USCIRF office to renew its demand for the immediate release of the Mountain Gateway leaders.
Anexa Alfred, a member of the United Nations Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, highlighted how religious freedom in Caribbean communities has been facing severe repercussions, such as internal divisions within religions, encouraged by the regime.
“The religion in question is Moravian. Religious freedom for Caribbean coast communities has continued to suffer serious repercussions with the closure of spaces in the country, in response to an absolute control policy promoted by the regime over territorial authorities,” she denounced.