The first student I met outside the Church of the Divine Mercy had a fresh bullet hole in his lower back. Far from the initial fighting was the Catholic church, a supposedly safe place for triage, and beleaguered and wounded students were arriving from the front lines by pickup truck, by motorbike, and on foot. They are already inside. These students, and much of Nicaragua, have been in revolt against President Daniel Ortega's government for the past three months, enraged by how he has consolidated near total power over his four terms as president, undermined democratic institutions, and allowed his security apparatus to employ deadly force against protesters.
More than people have been killed since the conflict began in April, the vast majority civilians. Starting Friday afternoon, a new crisis emerged. Pro-government militias set out to crush the student rebellion at the UNAN, one of the last strongholds of open resistance in the capital. During a hour siege, some university students and others were pinned down by gunfire inside this small Catholic church compound.
Two students were killed and at least 10 were injured before top Catholic clergy were able to negotiate their release on Saturday morning and escort the surviving students across police lines. Ortega's government has ultimately wrested back control of this campus - as well as other rebellious cities across Nicaragua - but the cost to his government could be steep.
There is a growing international condemnation of Ortega's heavy-handed tactics to break the protests. Business leaders and other former allies have called for early elections or for him to step down. Is this respecting human rights? Ortega has not spoken about the siege, but an official government news site, El 19, described the students as "terrorists and criminals" who had attacked a caravan of Sandinistas earlier in the day and then burned buildings on campus as they fled. It published pictures of the weapons found at the church after the students were taken away.
Over the past week, convoys of plainclothes gunmen, who are known here as paramilitaries and appear to coordinate with police, have swept through several cities breaking down barricades in bloody battles as they try to reassert government control. Last weekend, these militiamen crushed the protests in Jinotepe and Diriamba, two cities south of the capital, ransacking churches and leaving more than 30 dead in the area, according to human rights groups. On Friday morning, masked gunmen stood ominously in these two town squares overseeing the frightened few who dared go about their daily business.
