Crackdown forces student protest leaders into hiding
MANAGUA, Nicaragua — Jairo Bonilla was inside a Managua seminary last spring during a break in Catholic Church mediated talks to try to end Nicaragua’s bloody political crisis when two fellow students approached him with a threat.
“You’re going to pay,” warned one of them, Leonel Morales, the president of the government-backed student union at Nicaragua Polytechnic University, where they both studied. “Your family is going to cry tears of blood.”
That was then. Now the 20-year-old, a leader of student protests against President Daniel Ortega’s government, is in hiding, trying to ignore the threats that come regularly on Facebook and in menacing text messages. He has survived four months of resistance to Ortega’s government, but the student movement he helps lead is now largely underground.
Hundreds of people have been killed in the government’s brutal suppression of the monthslong protests that erupted in April. More than 2,000 people have been detained as security forces search for those who took part, including about 320 still in custody. Many say they have been abused at the hands of the authorities, including severe beatings and torture. The common refrain of “We’re not scared!” chanted at the early student marches, is seldom heard any more.
“Ortega achieved his objective,” Bonilla said in a recent interview, held at a secret location. “He made us feel fear.”
Chased off their college campuses, the future is uncertain for the students who have stood up to Ortega. Many have fled the country, others are scattered about in safe houses. Some are recovering from bullet wounds they suffered during the government crackdown, while Bonilla and other student leaders try to rally the attention of the international community and plan how to maintain pressure at home.
Bonilla joined the uprising against Ortega’s government in mid-April, angered like many of his classmates by the violent government response to protests by retirees angry over cuts in social security benefits. After the marches quickly evolved into a general call for Ortega’s ouster and student casualties mounted, Bonilla volunteered to represent his fellow students in the church-mediated talks to try to end the crisis.
That effort was shortlived. In a fiery speech in July, Ortega accused the Roman Catholic bishops organizing the mediation of being “coup mongers” seeking his ouster and said they were unqualified to be mediators. The talks have not restarted.
With control of the country’s universities and other opposition bastions now firmly in government hands, Ortega, who has been in power since 2007, has vowed to remain in office until at least 2021, when his latest term ends. He has dismissed those who participated in the protests as “terrorists” manipulated by outside forces.
There is now a tense calm in Managua, following the violent government crackdown. But there is little activity after nightfall; many restaurants are shuttered and people rush home at dusk, fearful of masked armed civilians working in coordination with the police who patrol the city.