Nicaragua expels nuns from convents
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Nicaragua's government has expelled over 30 nuns from three convents in its latest assault on detractors, and their whereabouts are unknown, a researcher and exiled media reported on Wednesday.
Martha Patricia Molina, a Nicaraguan lawyer and expert on matters concerning the Catholic Church, told AFP the women were "evicted from their monasteries" overnight by government agents.
It was not known if the nuns, mainly Nicaraguan, had left the country, said Molina, herself in exile in the United States.
Nicaragua has jailed hundreds of real and perceived opponents since former leftist guerrilla Daniel Ortega returned to power in 2007, quashing presidential term limits and seizing control of all branches of the state.
According to the United Nations, more than 300 people died in a crackdown on 2018 protests, which Ortega's government denounced as an attempted coup.
Most independent and opposition media now operate from abroad.
One of them, the online news site Confidencial operating from Costa Rica, reported the nuns were expelled from convents in the capital Managua and two other sites.
The exiled La Prensa newspaper said the order the women belonged to had its credentials scrapped by the government in 2023 with other Church-linked NGOs.
Ortega and his wife, vice president Rosario Murillo, accuse the Catholic Church of supporting the 2018 protests.
A constitutional reform approved last year is due to come into effect within days, giving Ortega and Murillo absolute power over all affairs of state.
It allows for the media and the Church to be monitored for any allegiance to "foreign interests."
Ortega's Sandinista rebels toppled a US-backed dictatorship in Nicaragua in 1979.
He led the country until 1990 and returned to power in 2007 with a more moderate program.
But in recent years he has seized control of all branches of government and led a sweeping crackdown on groups he sees as a threat to his rule.
Hundreds of politicians, businesspeople, journalists, intellectuals, human rights activists and religious figures have been expelled from Nicaragua and stripped of their nationality since February 2023, accused of treason.