Diana Lacayo never imagined that a hunger strike held in a church would turn into a nine-day siege, with the police outside and the electricity and water cut off inside.

But to the Nicaraguan authorities, even this modest protest was a challenge to be crushed.

For nearly two years, Nicaraguans have been rising up against the grip of one family, the Ortegas, who are accused of turning the country into a personal fief: the President has no term limits, the first lady is the vice-president and their children hold top posts in industries like gas and television.

In the face of unrest, the government has used uncompromising measures to silence public dissent. And despite a collapsing economy, American sanctions and mass emigration, President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice-President Rosario Murillo, still hold power firmly.

As pro-government activists sow violence in the streets, voices of dissent are silenced by arrest and assault. Roughed up and robbed by government supporters, protesters sometimes return home from demonstrations without phones or even shoes.

“If we go outside with a flag, we go to jail,” Lacayo said.

The standoff here at San Miguel Arcángel Church made clear that no place is a sanctuary.

Desperate to be heard, Lacayo and eight other women went there to see whether a hunger strike might win freedom for their husbands, brothers and sons, political activists who are languishing in government prisons. By the time it was over, 14 people in all, including a Catholic priest, had spent more than a week locked inside, surrounded by the police, as basic supplies dwindled to near nothing.

“They left us like rats in a hole,” said the Rev. Edwing Román, the pastor who was trapped in the church with the protesters.

For Nicaraguans, it was another reminder that simply speaking out can have severe consequences.

Last year, it looked as if the President might be on the ropes as Nicaraguans mounted their largest protests in decades. Though the government rebounded, the hunger strikers at San Miguel Arcángel and other protesters were buoyed by the ouster this fall of Ortega’s Bolivian ally, Evo Morales.

But for all their shared Left ideology and authoritarian leanings, Ortega enjoys one thing Morales did not: the military and the national police have stayed at his side, protecting him as security forces have done for Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela and other authoritarian leaders around the world.

And so in Nicaragua, protests have led only to more arrests, even as crisis racks the country. The economy is spiralling, and nearly 100,000 people have fled.

In the face of all this, Ortega and his wife have offered a portrait of Nicaragua as a country much safer than its neighbours, and a new slogan warns of the dangers of disruption: “You don’t play around with peace.”

Still, Nicaragua is far from safe: In reporting about the siege at the church, I was assaulted two days in a row.

The first time was a quick whack by a woman angry over having her photograph taken. A day later, a crowd of Sandinista Front party activists who had gathered outside the chapel surrounded me, pushed me to the ground and tried to wrestle my phone away. Then someone smashed a paving stone through my rental car’s windshield as I fled.

The police, who were present, did not intervene.

The protests began in the spring of 2018, when entire cities rose up against the Ortegas. They began over social security cuts, and soon turned into a widespread rebuke of the increasingly undemocratic government. The Supreme Court had been stacked, legislators forced out, municipal elections stolen and term limits scrapped.

Three months later, the government took the streets back. In a crushing crackdown, the police fired on protesters who had set up roadblocks around the country. Nationwide, more than 300 people died, including 22 police officers.

Dozens of protesters who burned buildings, took over universities for months and blocked roads for weeks are still in prison, among them Lacayo’s son, Scannierth Merlo Lacayo, 22, who was sentenced to five years.

In November, Lacayo and other women with jailed relatives approached Father Román and asked whether they could use his church for a hunger strike. The priest agreed: “Thinking that this was a civilized country, I said ‘yes’.”

Father Román, 59, is one of several priests in Nicaragua who have assumed leading roles in the insurrection — a cadre of clerics who have minced no words, using words like “dictatorship” to describe the government.

Lacayo, 48, and the other hunger strikers arrived at San Miguel around 9am on a Thursday, and the police immediately surrounded the church. At one point, they blocked the front doors and refused to let Father Román inside to offer Mass in his own church — so the parishioners prayed outside.

The priest eventually made it inside, but just as communion was ending, the lights went out. The authorities had cut the power.

“Father said: ‘Quick! Fill the barrels with water!’” said José Román Lanzas, a 13-year-old altar boy. “Sure enough, what did the government do? They cut off the water.”

The boy made it out, but five people, including a lawyer and human rights activist who were supporting the women, were trapped inside.

“We thought we were going there to have a hunger strike, not a siege,” said Karen Lacayo Rodríguez, 42, a former Sandinista whose 45-year-old brother, Edward E. Lacayo Rodríguez, is serving a 15-year sentence in a drug-trafficking case his family said was staged. (She is not related to Diana Lacayo.)

Father Román said: “When we opened the windows, the police outside would say to the mothers, ‘You are going to come out in black bags, smelling bad.’ We were hostages.”

Mothers of other prisoners tried to hold similar strikes at other churches. At the national cathedral in Managua, government supporters stormed in and roughed up a priest.

“We are living in a country without rules,” said the priest, the Rev. Rodolfo López, whose beating was caught on video. “We’re talking about a situation here where people deliberately, freely, offer their souls to the devil,” he said of the President and first lady.

The hunger strike at the cathedral ended within a day, but at San Miguel the situation grew dire.

The women slept on the floor, using curtains as blankets. Clothing donated for the poor was distributed so they could change. The women on the hunger strike had come prepared with electrolyte drinks, and the priest shared the contents of the rectory pantry with those who were not striking.

At night, hecklers threw rocks and rattled the metal garage gate. Nobody could bathe.

Volunteers who tried to bring water were arrested and charged with trafficking weapons. Still, they managed to bring in several gallons, and it rained twice, offering a few days of water and a chance to rinse off.

Eventually, their cellphone batteries ran out. They sent a message to supporters: if the church bells ring, someone is in mortal peril.

Eight days into the standoff, traffic was closed off for two blocks and dozens of police officers were lined up outside. The doors and windows were shuttered. The police did not allow anyone to enter, but they said the protesters were welcome to leave at any time.

“Don’t go writing in your notebook that we locked them inside,” a police official said. “If they want to come out, they can come out.”

He then ordered me to leave.

By the ninth day, food and water was running out. Father Román, who has diabetes, passed out twice and became delirious as his blood sugar dropped.

The women said the priest had told them he was willing to die. But while the women were prepared to give their own lives to the cause, they did not want to surrender his. They used the one telephone they had saved for emergencies — it had just 1 per cent battery left — and gave up.

The Red Cross ushered in an ambulance and freed the 14 people.

“The priest was in bad, bad, bad shape,” said one hunger striker, Martha L. Alvarado, 47, whose son, Melkissedex A. López Ferrey, 30, is serving four years for robbery after participating in the protests last year. “But when the ambulance came, he did not want to get on the stretcher. He said, ‘I am leaving here on my feet.’”

Several of the 14 people spent days in the hospital. Far from feeling defeated, the women felt victorious: word of the siege at the church led to international condemnation.

Vice-President Murillo, who is also minister of communications, did not respond to repeated requests for an interview. In the past, she has accused the protesters of being tools of the US, which has a long history of supporting violent insurrection against socialists in the region.

For a time after the impasse at San Miguel Arcángel, Father Román stayed away from his church. But his duties drew him back: 120 children needed to make their First Communion.

When he got there, he found seven riot police officers still stationed at the church — and the power still turned off.