Nicaraguan government seizes highly regarded university from Jesuits
Published:Wednesday | August 16, 2023 | 8:41 PM
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Nicaragua's government has confiscated a prestigious Jesuit-run university alleging it was a “centre of terrorism,” the college said Wednesday in announcing the latest in a series of actions by authorities against the Catholic Church and opposition figures.
The University of Central America in Nicaragua, which was a hub for 2018 protests against the regime of President Daniel Ortega, called the terrorism accusation unfounded and the seizure a blow to academia in Nicaragua.
The government did not confirm the confiscation or comment on the Jesuits' statement.
The Jesuit order, known as the Society of Jesus, said it received a judicial order Tuesday notifying it of the confiscation.
It said the government seized all the university's property, buildings, and bank accounts.
“With this confiscation, the Ortega government has buried freedom of thought in Nicaragua,” said María Asunción Moreno, who was a professor at the university until she was forced into exile in 2021.
The order quoted the government as claiming the university “operated as a centre of terrorism.”
“This is a government policy that systematically violates human rights and appears to be aimed at consolidating a totalitarian state,” the Society of Jesus of Central America said in a statement.
The university, known as the UCA, has been one of the region's most highly regarded colleges It has two large campuses with five auditoriums, engineering laboratories, a business innovation centre, a library with more than 160,000 books in Spanish and English, a molecular biology centre and facilities for 11 sports.
Of the 200,000 university students in Nicaragua, an estimated 8,000 attend UCA.
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