'Political messianism:' What’s behind Christian persecution in Nicaragua?
Nicaraguans living in Costa Rica carry a banner reading “Ortega Out” as they demonstrate in San Jose to commemorate the third anniversary of the beginning of the protests against the government of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega on April 18, 2021. Nicaragua’s political crisis erupted in April 2018, when protests mushroomed into a popular uprising that was met with a brutal crackdown in which hundreds were killed. | EZEQUIEL BECERRA/AFP via Getty ImagesAn ideological umbrella, which portrays President Daniel Ortega as being “anointed by God … for sacred Nicaragua,” is behind the persecution of Catholic and Protestant institutions and individuals in the Central American country, an adviser for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has said.
Dwight Bashir, the director of outreach and policy at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, hosted Christopher Ljungquist, an adviser for Latin America at the USCCB’s Office of International Justice and Peace, to spotlight Nicaragua’s “assault on religious freedom” in the bipartisan panel’s latest podcast last Friday.
A trend of persecution started in Nicaragua after protests against reforms to the public pension system in April 2018. The protests came after about a decade of deteriorating economic conditions in the country. Protesters, mostly students, demanded democratic reforms and that President Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, step down as they allegedly established a dictatorship marked by nepotism and repression.
Hundreds of people died in the protests in 2018.
In 2021, the backdrop for the religious freedom violations was not the ongoing protests but rather the lead-up to the November general election in which Ortega won for a fourth consecutive term, Bashir said.
USCCB’s Ljungquist said that Ortega’s government operates under “political messianism,” a movement that sees itself as “the national savior, the national liberator.” CP.
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