MANAGUA — The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights condemned on Thursday the “forced disappearance” eight days ago in Nicaragua of Bishop Isidoro Mora and a “new wave of arrests of religious” by the Daniel Ortega regime.
Nicaraguan media outlets working from exile reported this Thursday that the police arrested the vicar general of the Archdiocese of Managua, Carlos Avilés, which adds to the arrests in recent weeks of two other priests and Bishop Mora.
The UN agency “condemns the forced disappearance of Bishop Isidoro Mora in #Nicaragua for 8 days and the new wave of arrests of religious,” the office for Central America and the Caribbean, based in Panama, said on the social network .
“In addition to attacking their personal freedom, they would violate the right to religious freedom, a pillar of any democratic State,” he added.
The Nicaraguan police have not yet referred to the situation of any of the religious.
In addition to Mora, 53 years old and bishop of Siuna, in the Nicaraguan Caribbean region, Bishop Rolando Álvarez, 57 years old, is detained, sentenced on February 10 to 26 years for treason, propagation of false news and contempt. , a day after he refused to leave for the United States along with 222 expelled imprisoned opponents.
The relationship between the Church and the Nicaraguan government deteriorated amid the 2018 protests, after Ortega accused religious people of supporting opponents in what he considered an attempted coup d’état. Three months of street blockades and clashes between opposition and government supporters left more than 300 dead, according to the UN.
Álvarez has preferred prison to exile and was not among the 12 priests freed in October and sent to Rome following a government agreement with the Vatican. With Mora, there are now two bishops detained.
An investigation by Molina, in exile in the United States, maintains that since 2018 there have been 740 attacks against the Church and that 176 priests and nuns were expelled, banished or prohibited from entering the country.
Source: With information from AFP
