An American pastor wanted on dubious charges by the communist government of Nicaragua told Breitbart News on Wednesday that he believes his organization, Mountain Gateway, is the latest victim in a growing campaign to eradicate Christianity in the majority-Christian country.
Pastor Jon Britton Hancock explained that the Sandinista government told Mountain Gateway it was facing charges of “money laundering” and “organized crime” but has not published an indictment or clarified the alleged evidence backing the charges. Speaking to Breitbart News this week, Hancock confirmed that the Nicaraguan government is obstructing due process to such a degree that his organization does not even have the charging documents that say what crimes it allegedly committed. There is no public indictment. The imprisoned have been denied reasonable access to a legal defense. And the patterns of repressive behavior that Ortega has adopted against Christians suggest to Hancock that this is yet another case of Christian persecution in Nicaragua.
The arrests, Hancock said, interrupted a rapidly swelling wave of Christian fervor in the nation that Mountain Gateway was intimately involved in stirring.
“We saw a massive move of God involving hundreds of thousands of people. That has been a tremendous influence in the hearts of the people of Nicaragua,” Hancock said.
Police arrested 11 pastors associated with Mountain Gateway in December: Walner Omier Blandón Ochoa, Maricela de Fátima Mejía Ruiz, Marcos Sergio Hernández Jirón, Harry Lening Rios Bravo, Manuel de Jesús Ríos Flores, José Luis Orozco Urrutia, Álvaro Daniel Escobar Caldera, Juan Carlos Chavarría Zapata, Juan Luis Moncada, Orvin Alexis Moncada Castellano, and César Facundo Burgalin Miranda.
They have also sought the arrest of Hancock, his son Jacob Britton Hancock, and daughter-in-law Cassandra Mae Hancock, all American citizens who work in Christian ministry.
In a press release on Wednesday, Mountain Gateway emphasized that it “does not understand the complexity of what is happening” and especially questioned why 9 of the 11 pastors arrested remain behind bars when the Nicaraguan government itself says they “are innocent, but claims they were under the control of the three U.S. citizens and two of the imprisoned Nicaraguan pastors.”
“It’s hard to understand this allegation because the government has viewed and approved our funding as it entered the country,” Hancock told Breitbart News this week. “We have documentation outlining our submission for approval of ministry operations funds and for those funds’ approval.”
The anti-Christian context of the political situation in Nicaragua suggests that the charges are part of a greater ambition to erase the faith from the country. In 2018, massive anti-communist protests erupted in the country, peaceful in nature and often backed by local priests in Catholic communities. Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, responded with outsized violence, killing more than 300 people. The visible presence of the Catholic Church in supporting the protests led Ortega to declare the Vatican a terrorist organization and accuse it of attempting to stage a coup against his regime – even as the Vatican largely remained silent and the opposition voices were local Nicaraguan priests.
Read more at: breitbart.com