Four young people abducted after the cancellation of the UCA

Nicaraguan student leaders Joseling Mayela Campos Silva and Josseth Miranda were detained by the police of the Ortega regime, raising the number of young people kidnapped in Nicaragua to four. Three of them are university students, captured after the confiscation of the Jesuit Central American University (UCA), activists and social movements denounced on Tuesday, August 22, 2023.

“Mayela Campos and Josseth Miranda, students and activists, were kidnapped yesterday (Monday, August 21) from their home by the Ortega police and paramilitaries,” exiled activist, student leader, and former political prisoner Yaritza Rostrán Mairena said via her account on the social network X (formerly Twitter).

“None of the young people have committed any crime, they are just critical students committed to freedom and justice,” she added.

Rostrán Mairena shared a video released by Campos Silva, a feminist and third year student of Civil Engineering at the state-run National University of Engineering (UNI), before being arrested, in which she says: “Without much to add, outside the house there are two people (...) and I guess I'm going to be arrested.” 

The Articulation of Social Movements of Nicaragua also denounced “the kidnapping of a young man, Josset Miranda,” who is a veterinarian.

“He and his girlfriend Mayela Campos Silva have been kidnapped by the Ortega Police in the afternoon hours of August 21, 2023,” it pointed out.

Demand release of students

The Alliance of Nicaraguan Youth and Students demanded the release of the student leaders who have been detained in the last week, as well as respect for their physical integrity.

The Nicaraguan University Alliance (AUN) warned that “the dictatorship is not only kidnapping the universities, but also the students.”

The regime has captured four people, three of them student leaders in Nicaragua. The first two are Adela Espinoza Tercero, a graduate of the Social Communication program at the UCA, and Gabriela Morales, from the illegalized Juan Pablo II University.

The kidnapping of the young people comes within days of the closure of the Jesuit UCA, one of the most prestigious private universities in Nicaragua. Around the same time, unknown persons were seen burning a flag of the ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in the streets of Managua. In addition, there has been signs of rejection from the student community over the imposition of the regime’s indoctrination in the renamed Casimiro Sotelo National University.

Last Friday, the Nicaraguan government published an agreement of the Ministry of the Interior in the Official Gazette La Gaceta, approving the cancellation of the legal personality of the UCA, originally granted on August 13, 1960.

The UCA, considered one of the last bastions of freedom of thought in Nicaragua, has had to transfer its movable and immovable assets, as well as its bank accounts, to the State of Nicaragua by court order, after being accused of alleged terrorism crimes.

The UCA confirmed on Wednesday, August 16, the judicial order, rejected the “unfounded accusations,” of the authorities, and decided to suspend its academic and administrative activities.

The authorities froze the UCA's bank accounts and immobilized its property, and a body attached to the Supreme Court of Justice revoked the accreditation of the university's Mediation Center, measures which have been implemented amidst friction between the Ortega government and the Nicaraguan Catholic Church.

*With information from EFE

This article was originally published in Spanish in Confidencial and translated by our staff.