CENSOR, PERSECUTION ARE HANDMAIDENS IN NICARAGUA: EDITOR

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000100370041-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 28, 2010
• Sequence Number: 41
• Publication Date: July 26, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/28: CIA-RDP90-00552R000100370041-7
h- rt P ~ ~1 p.
WASHINGTON TI?'EES
26 July 1983
Censor, persecution
are handmaidens in
Nicaragua: editor
E
Humberto Belli, a former editor
for La Prensa, on censorship and
persecution in Nicaragua.
Humberto Belli was the editorial
page editor of the daily newspaper La
Prensa in Nicaragua. He left the coun-
try e year ago to speak out against cen-
sorship of the media and mis-
treatment of Christians in Nicaragua.
He has been one of the featured
speakers for Christian Solidarity Inter-
national at its first world conference on
the persecuted church ending today in
Vancouver. The CSI conference pre-
cedes the World Council of Churches
Sixth, Assembly which has not listed
the persecuted church as one of its
eight topics of discussion. Belli was
irte-i?iewed by Washington Times for-
eign. staffer Stephen Goldstein.
Q. How do the Sandinistas persecute
Christians who are opposed to Marxist
t'ought2
A: Thev have in a variety of ways.
They have restricted the access to the
media of those Christians who are not
buytne this Marxist brand of
Christianity. In Jul}' 1980, they put our
Archbishop Miguel Obando y Bravo off
the air. Archbishop Obando has had a
TV mass broadcast for several
years. They stopped that program and
the on'.y channels left open to the arch-
bishop were Catholic Radio and La
Pre.^.sa. Now. La Prensa is under com-
plete censorship since March 1982,
and the Catholic Radio is under severe
censorship. So the archbishop no
longer is able to broadcast his views,
a;tho::_h he is still able to publish his
horr:ly in L.- Prensa.
y
aster, church leaders had to
submit their homilies or their sermons
to the Minister of the Interior to have
them approved for broadcasting.
The church didn't want to submit to
that condition. Thus the government
didn't allow the church to broadcast
religious services on Easter for the
first time in Nicaragua's history.
Also, those priests like Obando who
are not sponsoring Marxist theology
are under continuous harassment by
Sandinista mobs, especially in the
countryside where they sometimes
have their religious services inter-
rupted. Many times a political meeting
would take place at the same time a
mass is under way.
In Managua, they have staged sev-
eral physical attacks against the bish-
ops and the priests who are not with
the Sandinistas. They have physically
attacked the archbishop of Managua
three times. Senor Cosco Vivas, auxil-
iary bishop of Managua, was beaten by
a Sandinista mob last August. They
also tried to disgrace and defame the
director of Catholic Radio, Father Bis-
marck Carballos.
So while preaching Marxist theol-
ogy, the Sandinistas are taking off the
media those who would sponsor a
different kind of theology. They are
also physically harassing church lead-
ers. They have staged defamation cam-
paigns for three years in order to
erode and undermine the authority of
the bishop and the leaders of the
church, saying that they are aligned
with the CIA and are agents of
American imperialism.
So far, the way that the Marxists in
Nicaragua have persecuted the church
is not a totally direct way. They allow
the distribution of Bibles. You can
go to mass in Nicaragua, you can go to
religious rallies, but little by little,
they are isolating and harassing the
orthodox leaders of the churches,
reducing them to direct communica-
tionin the churches and direct
preaching to proclaim their message.
There are some religious groups in
Nicaragua that have been under a clas-
sical pattern of religious repression.
This is not a subtle kind of repression
but a direct one like the Mormons,
Jehovah's Witnesses, Moravians,
Seventh-Day Adventists and some
evangelical groups. Starting in March
1982, Barricada, the official newspa-
per of the Sandinistas, started to
present front page reports on how
Protestant sects were manipulating the
religious sentiment of the people and
how they have been historically an arm
of American imperialism.
Then, two months later, after a
speech by Tomas Borge, in which he
accused sects of being a sponsor of the
counter-revolution, of preaching reac-
tionary attitudes, the Sandinista
mobs went through the streets and in a
single night took over 20 churches of
these Protestant groups.
Tb accuse its enemies of being CIA
agents has been the standard practice
of the Sandinista regime since 1979.
This has been the standard Marxist
practice in Cuba. We in La Prensa were
accused of using the same tactics to
destablize the regime as a Chilean
newspaper did when Allende was in
power. They said we had to be
under CIA help but they could not
prove it. They also have said Obando
has been playing into the hands of the
CIA.
The Sandinistas already have found
out who the Christians are. They say
that the Christians who are not Marx-
ists are not real Christians. Borge said,
probably in May 1982, that Obando
was a candidate to be the Antichrist in
Nicaragua.
Q: Is there a lot of apposition within
the church to the Sandinistas?
A: Yes, there is a lot, among the peo-
ple, too. Liberation theology has not
been a popular trend in Nicaragua. It
has been an elite trend, a trend that is
sponsored by a group of intellectuals
who have arrived in Nicaragua after
the time of the revolution but are very
resourceful. They have full access and
facilities to the mass media. They
have a lot of theologians arriving in the
country to be at group seminars.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/28: CIA-RDP90-00552R000100370041-7
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