Nicaragua’s government has stripped masses of lawyers of their licenses to practice in recent days, in what a United Nations expert described Friday as a “purge of the legal profession” aimed at eroding the country’s final shreds of democratic checks and balances.
The government of husband-and-wife copresidents, Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, has been carrying out an all-out crackdown on dissent since mass social protests in 2018 that the government violently repressed.
Since then, the government has imprisoned adversaries, religious leaders, journalists and others, forcing thousands to flee the country. It has stripped hundreds of their Nicaraguan citizenship and possessions. Since 2018, it has also shut down more than 5,000 organizations, largely religious groups, but also local rotary clubs and scouting organizations.
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