The international community’s siege on Nicaragua continues to intensify. The United Nations Human Rights Council announced Thursday the creation of a mechanism to investigate human rights abuses by the regimes of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo since 2018. In April this year, the government unleashed brutal repression against the civilian population. who took to the streets with mass demonstrations against a controversial pension reform. According to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, police and paramilitaries killed 355 people. Since then, more than 120,000 Nicaraguans have sought refuge in Costa Rica, the political persecution of dissidents has not stopped and the ruling couple’s accumulation of power is increasing.
The measure involves the creation of a group of three independent experts and a budget of $3 million to monitor abuses committed in the country over the past four years. “Establish the facts and circumstances surrounding the alleged violations, collect, consolidate, preserve and analyze information and evidence and, where possible, identify those responsible,” said a statement from 15 organizations supporting the defense committed to human rights in Nicaragua. The commission will work for a year and make “recommendations for improving the situation” and “provide guidelines for access to justice”.
The decision was approved during a session of the UN Human Rights Council, a body made up of 47 countries. In the vote, 20 countries abstained and a further seven opposed: Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Honduras, Russia, China and Eritrea. Already on March 7, the UN published a sharp report expressing its concerns about the situation in the Central American country.
In a long list, the organization stated, among other things, that there had been “no accountability for the human rights violations committed since April 2018”; the existence of at least 43 political prisoners for the 2021 elections; summary proceedings “without following due process”; the “arbitrary arrests or harassment by state agents against human rights defenders, journalists and lawyers”.
“The solution is that Ortega leaves”
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So far this year, Ortega and Murillo have tightened the repression. Cristiana Chamorro, an opponent of the regime and daughter of Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, President of Nicaragua in the 1990s, was sentenced to eight years in prison in mid-March in a trial riddled with irregularities – after winning Ortega in an election – and the journalist Pedro Joaquín Chamorro , who was assassinated during the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza.
He also expelled the International Committee of the Red Cross’s Head of Mission. In February, Hugo Torres, a historic Sandinista guerrilla fighter who fought alongside Ortega, died in prison for his critical attitude towards his former partner. This death, which was criticized even by the president’s own brother, Humberto Ortega, who accused him of dying because of the “cruel imprisonment” to which he was subjected. In addition, the country’s most important universities are under state control. This has led in recent days to the resignation of two figures who previously represented the Sandinista executive: Arturo McFields resigned from his post as ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS) last week, calling Ortega a dictator, while lawyer Paul Reichler left his position as representative before the court in The Hague in a letter condemning the country being ruled by a dictatorship.
Juan Pappier, a researcher at Human Rights Watch (HRW) at Americas, believes the UN initiative “provides a glimmer of hope that there will ever be justice for the gross and systematic human rights abuses committed by the Ortega regime.” “I am confident that the expert group will do a good job, but in order to achieve a democratic transition, it is necessary to unite more mechanisms and condemning voices of the international community,” he said.
The President of the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (CNIDH), Vilma Núñez, is more skeptical: “I am against triumphalist reactions, I want to see this resolution as progress on a long road that needs to be covered. I greet you with moderate optimism, but with determination that we must give our full support to the expert group, considering the hostility it faces from the government,” he assured. “This is not the solution, the solution is that Ortega leaves, as long as he remains in power any effort will meet obstacles, sometimes insurmountable, with a very real cost in life,” concludes the activist.
José Miguel Vivanco, human rights defender and former director of the American department of HRW, also agrees: “It is a very important step, very necessary, but it is not enough. Let no one believe that this mechanism will end the human rights abuses of this dysfunctional regime. The political prisoners will remain in arbitrary prisons for as long as Ortega deems necessary. For conditions to improve in Nicaragua, a democratic transition is essential, and that will require political, diplomatic and financial pressure on those who are giving oxygen to this regime.”
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