NGOs shut down in Nicaragua

Churches and other religious organizations in Nicaragua will now have to pay income tax after the government repealed a law on Thursday , which provided for an exception for them, says an analytical material of Agence France-Presse, quoted by BTA.

In addition, the Latin American country's authorities said they were closing 151 non-governmental organizations. Agence France-Presse reported this, citing a decision published in the Nicaraguan official gazette.

The tax exemption was canceled against the background of the legislative reform undertaken by the government to strengthen control over non-governmental organizations, notes AFP.

Yesterday (August 23), the government passed new legislation that obliges non-governmental organizations operating in Nicaragua to operate only within the framework of "union relations" with state institutions.

The repealed legal text exempted churches and religious organizations from paying tax on income derived from activities and goods that are strictly religious in nature. Henceforth, a tax of 30% will be imposed on the annual income of these organizations.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights criticized the actions of the Nicaraguan authorities, saying that there was a "deliberate closure of the public and democratic space". According to the commission, the removal of the tax exemption is a measure that limits "seriously the ability of civil society to actively participate in political, public, cultural and religious life".

Marta Patricia Molina, a researcher living in exile in the United States, stated on her profile on the social network "X" that the Nicaraguan government is trying to "financially suffocate the Church, with the aim of weakening it under its own weight".

The closure of non-governmental organizations

In addition to canceling the tax exemption for religious organizations, the government announced on Thursday that it was closing 151 non-governmental organizations, most of them chambers that deal with international or sectoral trade.

This was the second wave of NGO closures in Nicaragua this week.

On Monday, August 19, 1,500 non-governmental organizations, most of them religious, were ordered closed. AFP notes that this was the largest closure of organizations ordered by President Daniel Ortega since 2018.

The United States criticized the closure of the NGOs. Washington condemned the "harassment and violence, detentions and repression against members of religious organizations and religious communities in Nicaragua".

Former Nicaraguan presidential candidate Felix Maradiaga, who lives in exile in the United States, said on the social network "X" that the closure of non-governmental organizations is "a new dark page of the systematic repression that characterizes the regime of Daniel Ortega".

On Tuesday, the spokeswoman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Liz Trossell, called the closure of the 1,500 non-governmental organizations "deeply troubling, especially in a country where in recent years we have seen an erosion of civil space and unjustified restrictions of religious freedom".

Since 2018, a total of 5,300 civil organizations have been closed in Nicaragua, notes AFP.