Simon Caldwell
Human rights defender Bianca Jagger has accused the Nicaraguan dictatorship of creating a spiritual vacuum in the country by its purge of Catholic clergy.
Jagger, 73, founder and chair of the Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation, said the expulsion of two bishops on 14th January, 15 priests and two seminarians to the Vatican was part of a campaign by President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, to crush all political resistance in the country.
In a telephone interview on 19th January, Jagger said a total of 203 priests and seminarians have been exiled since mass protests against the government in April 2018. The expulsions included eight clergy in a group of 222 prisoners of conscience released and forcibly exiled to the United States in February 2023.
Jagger is a former actress and the first wife of rock star Mick Jagger. The couple married in Saint-Tropez in a Catholic ceremony in 1971 but divorced in 1978. Jagger last visited her native Nicaragua in 2018, when the anti-government protests swept through the country.
Besides the expulsions, the Ortega regime also “took over 27 universities between December 2021 and August 2023, including the John Paul II Catholic University, denying “thousands of children and young people … access to an education and a professional career.” Jagger called for international sanctions on the regime.
Picture: Human rights activist Bianca Jagger speaks during a news conference with Amnesty International executives May 29, 2018, about the launch of documents for multiple cases of violence and repression during recent protests against Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega’s government in Managua. (OSV News photo/Oswaldo Rivas, Reuters)