OPINION | In Nicaragua the worst predictions always come true

Editor’s note: Astrid Valencia is a human rights lawyer with almost 20 years of experience in human rights and Central America matters. She currently works as a researcher for Central America at Amnesty International. The opinions expressed here are solely his.

(CNN Spanish) – In 2016 I toured Nicaragua and spoke with dozens of peasant, black and indigenous people about the repression and human rights violations derived from the concession of the Grand Interoceanic Canal. I learned not only about their stories, but also about their homes and their holy places. I ate at their tables and, together with them, I experienced searches and police harassment. But nothing prepared me back then for what was to come in April 2018: the repressive state response and lethal that the Government of Daniel Ortega established, and continues to implement, to silence social demands of human rights.

In that month, the world began to count people injured, unjustly detained and killed at the hands of the police and armed groups related to the Government. Ortega has crossed out these accusations as “inadmissible.”

That same year I returned to the country, I again toured its corners and I found a nation infested with parastatal groups with weapons for military use, and I heard the voices of a people in pain.

After more than three years, reports of human rights violations and Crimes against humanity, including arbitrary detentions, torture and extrajudicial executions, continue to accumulate in the records of human rights organizations and international organizations. More than 1,600 people have been arrested; more than 300, murdered; thousands, injured, and more than 100,000 have had to leave the country to protect their freedom and life, according to information from Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

As if that were not enough, since April 2018, the Government has canceled the legal registration of several human rights organizations and has raided and confiscated the assets of several NGOs and independent media. In addition, 2020 closed with the approval of a series of laws that make it impossible to exercise human rights, especially political rights, freedom of expression and freedom of association. At the end of that year, everything indicated that the repressive siege would be closing as the presidential elections of November 2021 approached.

By May 2021, various national organizations articulated In defense of rights, they reported that 124 people were still behind bars just for exercising their rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly. And with each month, the list grows.

Between June 2 and 14, the Government of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo implemented a new repressive wave which included the arrest of four presidential hopefuls and nine political activists. Following this relentless strategy, it has curtailed the population’s ability to exercise their political rights without fear of reprisals. Most of those arrested have been charged with the famous Law for the Defense of the Rights of the People to Independence, Sovereignty and Self-Determination for Peace, on which the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) ruled in January 2021, stating that the law would limit disproportionately political rights.

The arrest of more than a dozen political and social leaders in recent days, plus the legal harassment of independent journalists, makes it clear that the Nicaraguan authorities are ready to do anything to prevent the exercise of human rights and that during the context elections will increase their repressive strategy to unsuspected levels.

The arrests in recent days have been accompanied by complaints of violations of due process. In a conversation with the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights, a prestigious and historic non-governmental organization, they told me that the methods used to detain people, in some cases, have included the lack of court orders, incommunicado detention of those detained, lack of information on their place of detention and their conditions, and little or no access to legal representation of their choice during their deprivation of liberty. In addition, in most cases, raids have been carried out that the IACHR has described as illegal. The relatives of some of the detainees They have reported that they have been denied the remission of food to their relatives behind bars. Worse still, the family of one of the detained activists, whose identity we cannot reveal for fear of reprisals, told Amnesty International that, so far, they have not been officially notified about the place of detention of their relative and therefore Uncertainty about his whereabouts and the conditions of his detention continues.

Regarding the arrests, the Nicaraguan government warns that it will not admit what it considers to be interference by the international community and Vice President and First Lady Rosario Murillo questioned critics: “In how many countries and in how many organizations have we seen how the people who run over the peoples, looting, stealing, are brought to justice ».

To recent pronouncements by the international community, the Nicaraguan government has responded with more arrests and violent raids, confirming its disregard for international scrutiny and its obligations towards human rights. However, the international community has the responsibility to implement a robust strategy that helps to ensure respect for human rights, and that those suspected of having criminal responsibility for such acts are brought to justice. In short, let the painful predictions in Nicaragua come to an end and begin a path of justice, truth and reparation for the thousands of victims.