{"id":7849,"date":"2022-08-02T07:47:14","date_gmt":"2022-08-02T11:47:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=7849"},"modified":"2022-08-02T07:47:14","modified_gmt":"2022-08-02T11:47:14","slug":"nicaraguas-government-shutters-6-church-radio-stations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=7849","title":{"rendered":"Nicaragua\u2019s Government Shutters 6 Church Radio Stations"},"content":{"rendered":"
Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega attends the closing ceremony of the XX ALBA Summit, at the Convention Palace in Havana, Cuba, Dec. 14, 2021. The United Nations Organization said on Friday, July 29, 2022 that the arbitrary closure of hundreds of civil society institutions in Nicaragua “is very worrying” and called on Ortega’s government to avoid repressing activists and political opponents. (AP Photo\/Ismael Francisco, File)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Nicaraguan authorities ordered the closure of six radio stations belonging to the Roman Catholic Church on Monday and surrounded one with riot police, church officials said.<\/p>\n

Rev. Rolando \u00c1lvarez, the bishop of the northern province of Matagalpa, said during Mass that the he had received a letter from the tate telecommunications agency Telcor informing him of the closures.<\/p>\n

\u00c1lvarez called the move \u201can injustice\u201d and urged Telcor\u2019s director to show the legality.<\/p>\n

The bishop has been one of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega\u2019s most outspoken critics in the church. He has called for the release of prisoners, including a number of political opposition leaders, and earlier this year went on a hunger strike to protest what he called \u201cpolice persecution\u201d against him.<\/p>\n

\u00c1lvarez also said Monday that police had occupied the parish house in Sebaco, where one of the radio stations operated. Sebaco is about 65 miles north of Managua.<\/p>\n

The Matagalpa diocese denounced the occupation in a statement. It said the parish priest, Rev. Uriel Vallejos, also a government critic, was inside the house.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to make clear that if they touch one of our priests, they touch the entire Matagalpa diocese,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n

Vallejos called on the faithful to come to the parish house to protect him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am being besieged; the police have broken the chapel\u2019s locks to enter where the (radio) equipment is to take it,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThe police are attacking the faithful who are inside the school (next door).\u201d<\/p>\n

The government did not comment publicly on the radio station closures. During recent months, Ortega\u2019s government has closed more than 1,000 non-governmental groups.<\/p>\n

In November, Ortega won a fourth consecutive term after locking his potential challengers in elections that foreign governments called a farce. The United States and European Union have imposed sanctions on members of his government and family members.<\/p>\n

Ortega has maintained that huge street protests in 2018 were an attempt to forcibly remove him from office with international backing. His government has systematically pursued opposition figures and organizations viewed as critics.<\/p>\n

– Gabriela Selser, AP News<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nicaraguan authorities ordered the closure of six radio stations belonging to the Roman Catholic Church on Monday and surrounded one with riot police, church officials said. Rev. Rolando \u00c1lvarez, the bishop of the northern province of Matagalpa, said during Mass that the he had received a letter from the tate telecommunications agency Telcor informing him…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":7851,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/storage.googleapis.com\/afs-prod\/media\/871caf1c8ddf42279c550e3dc06b3f32\/800.jpeg","fifu_image_alt":"Auto Draft","footnotes":""},"categories":[192],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-polity-governance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7849"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7850,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7849\/revisions\/7850"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}