2 de diciembre 2024
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In record time, the Ortega regime ordered the peeling walls of the building confiscated from CONFIDENCIAL to be repainted. The building, which was supposedly functioning as a "maternity home," had been abandoned less than two years after its opening. To sustain the "fiction" of the supposed purpose behind the illegal confiscation, they also ordered the installation of a new sign claiming the building now serves as a "maternal and child clinic."
On Saturday, November 30, 2024, CONFIDENCIAL published a photo showing the supposed "maternity home" in a state of abandonment. Sources linked to the Ministry of Health revealed that just 24 hours after the publication, on Sunday, December 1, a team of workers arrived to clear the overgrown parking lot, clean up, and repaint the interior and exterior walls.
The following morning, Ministry of Health personnel dressed in white lab coats—including a doctor, assistants, and nurses—were sent to the site to pose for new photos. The regime now claims that "the Camila López Maternity Home, located in Managua’s District I, has been transformed into a Maternal and Child Clinic."
The official order was to resurrect the abandoned maternity house, which had never actually provided services and was left unused after the Ortega regime’s fanfare in February 2021.
According to the regime, the facility will now offer “more comprehensive care to Nicaraguan families through a specialized team of pediatricians and OB-GYNs providing free services.” However, the published photos only show people seated in the dining area of the building that was stolen from CONFIDENCIAL—part of the furniture and other assets also confiscated.
Other images show the freshly painted and decorated rooms of the building, though they remain empty. Only one photo, a close-up shot, depicts a pregnant woman in a consultation with an alleged doctor using a portable ultrasound machine.
Following CONFIDENCIAL’s reporting, the regime once again orchestrated a spectacle, widely photographed, in another attempt to "whitewash" the illegal confiscation.
Fabricated “Maternity House” in Stolen Building
Closed, with the fuchsia pink paint on the walls and the giant image of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo peeling off, rusted gates, and untrimmed trees and overgrowth, the “Camila López” maternity house looks abandoned. It was set up by the regime to justify the illegal confiscation of the CONFIDENCIAL offices, carried out in December 2018.
The neglect of the clinic contrasts with the supposed purpose of the Ministry of Health (Minsa) facility. “In this maternity house, which we are inaugurating today by the blessing of God and the political will of Commander Daniel (Ortega) and Comrade Rosario (Murillo), we will care for more than five thousand women,” said former Health Minister Carolina Dávila Murillo, presidential advisor on health issues, on February 23, 2021, when the clinic opened.
The last time the Ortega regime's propaganda outlets published photos of the maternity house was on February 23, 2022. That day, Dr. Dilvia Flores, director of the “Roberto Herrera” health center, stated that they treated “an average” of 25 pregnant women daily. She also mentioned that the clinic held activities like “craft workshops, nutrition talks, and emotional support.”
“To try to cover up the crime of stealing and shutting down an independent news outlet founded in 1996, they handed over our offices to the Ministry of Health on February 23, 2021. They grandly inaugurated a maternity clinic in District I that never actually provided services to pregnant women,” said Carlos Fernando Chamorro, director of CONFIDENCIAL, in a comment posted on CONFIDENCIAL’s YouTube channel.
“Nearly four years later, the supposed Minsa clinic is closed and abandoned, exposing the lie and failure of the dictatorship. Meanwhile, CONFIDENCIAL continues to do journalism from exile, investigating corruption and denouncing severe human rights violations,” Chamorro emphasized.
In February 2021, Ortega transferred ownership of CONFIDENCIAL’s property, as well as the offices of other confiscated NGOs and media outlets, such as 100% Noticias, the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (Cenidh), the Popol Na Foundation, the Institute for Democracy and Development (Ipade), and the Institute for Strategic Studies and Public Policies (Ieepp), to the Ministry of Health.
The police raid of CONFIDENCIAL in 2018
On December 14, 2018, the police raided the offices of CONFIDENCIAL, including the television studio where Esta Noche and Esta Semana were filmed, as well as the offices of the consulting firm Cabal. However, the theft of equipment began at midnight on December 13, when a police operation broke into the building and took computers and other equipment
Later on the night of Friday, December 14, the police returned to the building, this time to confiscate the remaining equipment that hadn’t been taken the previous night.
The provisional inventory of the goods confiscated from CONFIDENCIAL, Esta Semana, and Cabal, presented to the Prosecutor's Office in December 2018, included 35 computers, a newly opened television studio, seven television cameras, two video editing systems, two photography cameras, dozens of hard drives, cell phones, audiovisual production accessories, as well as accounting and institutional documents of the companies and personal documents, both physical and digital.
Article 44 of the current Nicaraguan Constitution guarantees “the right to private property of movable and immovable goods and the instruments and means of production.” It also prohibits “the confiscation of property” and mandates that “officials who violate this provision will be held liable with their assets at all times for the damages caused.”
Since 2018, the FSLN Administration has illegally confiscated hundreds of properties belonging to citizens, companies, media outlets, NGOs, universities, business chambers, and churches.
The preliminary cost of hundreds of private property confiscations ordered by the FSLN Administration since 2018 is more than 250 million dollars, according to estimates published in a report by the Pro Transparency and Anti-Corruption Observatory (OPTA).
Murillo Tried to Secure Taiwan's Support for Confiscation
The regime made a grand announcement for the inauguration of the “Maternity House.” The building was painted bright pink, with a giant photo of Ortega and Murillo displayed on its walls. The supposed clinic was furnished with furniture that once belonged to this media outlet, including the desks and chairs previously used by the CONFIDENCIAL team. The amount spent by the Ministry of Health (Minsa) on the center remains undisclosed.
The layout placed the maternity rooms for women who had just given birth on the second floor, requiring at least 15 steps to access.
Two months after the maternity house's inauguration, a team from CONFIDENCIAL found that no pregnant women had sought health services there, and no one could enter without first being cleared by two officers from the National Police's special forces, who stood guard at the building's entrance with rifles.
Vice President Rosario Murillo claimed that the inauguration of the maternity house at CONFIDENCIAL was funded with the cooperation of the Taiwanese government. However, there was no diplomatic presence from the embassy, as is customary during the inaugurations of maternity houses. Days later, Taiwan completely distanced itself from the project.
“The maternity houses we support are located in remote areas of the departments; there are none in Managua,” responded Taiwanese Ambassador Jaime Chin-Mu Wu briefly to CONFIDENCIAL through his press office.
In 2019, the governments of Nicaragua and Taiwan approved the "Maintenance and Repair of Maternity Houses and Health Posts" project, through which more than 50 maternity houses were repaired and equipped across the country. However, these projects were carried out in rural areas, where women would arrive weeks before childbirth to receive medical assistance during delivery. Therefore, the establishment of one in the capital was not justified.
Four years later, the supposed clinic set up in the CONFIDENCIAL newsroom is completely abandoned.
This article was published in Spanish in Confidencial and translated by our staff. To get the most relevant news from our English coverage delivered straight to your inbox, subscribe to The Dispatch.
