The Ortega regime continues to show the power it exercises to control all environments, including the academy.
Up to 15 years in prison received 18 activists and critics of the regime, in the midst of an avalanche of control carried out by the Government and that includes seizing and creating new higher education centers.
Former minister Dora María Téllez and 24-year-old student leader Lesther Alemán, who was sent to prison after publicly asking Daniel Ortega to resign, are among those convicted, he recalls. BBC.
In addition, last week the State took possession of six private universities that were banned for alleged breaches and later passed into state hands at the request of the Government.
The nationalization of these six universities after the cancellation of the legal personality of fourteen higher education centers, something that affects more than 14,000 students, has been the object of criticism from the student sector, academics and legal experts for the arguments, procedure and the results.
The University Coordinator for Democracy and Justice said that what is sought is “political control” of the universities, and warned of “serious consequences” for the quality of education.
Legal specialists, such as the lawyer María Asunción Moreno, have pointed out to EFE that the Nicaraguan Constitution defends the autonomy of universities, whose properties “cannot be subject to intervention or expropriation.”
The rector of the former UFP, Adrián Meza, affirmed, from exile, that before his university was canceled the Ministry of the Interior refused to receive its financial statements on several occasions.
It is all because the universities played a relevant role in the anti-government demonstrations of 2018, since their students led the protests that became massive throughout Nicaragua and were reduced with armed attacks that, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, provoked at least 355 dead. Ortega has admitted 200.
Elthon Rivera, 27, is a former student leader who has personally experienced being prevented from graduating twice due to political retaliation and is now in exile.
He recalls how the participation of university students put the government in trouble in 2018, and from that moment they became the population at which the regime directed its attacks the most.
“In August 2018 there were expulsions against university students who had raised their voices… Currently the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights tells us 150 students expelled exclusively for political reasons,” comments Rivera, who tells this newspaper that it is the second time that he and 50 other students see their student aspirations cut short.
He was first expelled from the public university almost finishing his Medicine degree, in 2018, when he was treating people injured in the protests; and a week ago he left his country due to actions against private universities, because in one of them he was about to finish his Political Science degree and was working on a scholarship program to help those expelled in 2018.
“(What is happening now) is nothing more than one more attack for wanting to control all the spaces where youth gather, where critical thinking is developed; and, like any dictatorship, there is the issue of controlling education to turn it into a system that, far from being training, is one of partisan indoctrination,” says Rivera, adding that with this it is possible to put an end to university autonomy.
Analysts predict that as a consequence of the measures there will be a large desertion; In addition, the young population could choose to migrate before an environment that recalls the time of internal war in the country becomes more complicated. (I)
Source: Eluniverso
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