National and international human rights organizations spoke out in demand for the “cessation of the repeated violation of Human Rights and the Convention against Torture” recalling the regime’s rupture with the United Nations (UN) Committee, for which they request greater actions on the part of the international community so that “Nicaragua renders accounts”.
“We remind you that the signing and ratification of the Convention against Torture was a voluntary action of the Nicaraguan State and that, therefore, it must comply with its international obligations in the matter, specifically the recommendations provided by the Committee,” says the signed statement. by 10 organizations.
Related news: Bachelet: «DD situation. H H. in Nicaragua it has continued to deteriorate»
The committee recently urged the Ortega-Murillo regime to investigate allegations of torture perpetrated by state officials against members of the opposition, especially those participating in the April 2018 protests. In the second periodic review of the situation in the country, which was carried out without the presence of government officials due to its refusal to participate, the president of the Committee, Claude Heller, stated that Nicaragua “has systematically violated human rights.”
Heller recalled that in the 2018 protests, at least 355 people lost their lives due to the indiscriminate use of force by vigilante groups, another 1,600 were injured and 1,614 were deprived of their liberty, denouncing in some cases torture in state centers and clandestine
Another member of the UN body, Erdogan Iscan, added that state agents are suspected of having kidnapped human rights defenders and journalists critical of the Daniel Ortega government.
Related news: Bachelet: «DD situation. H H. in Nicaragua it has continued to deteriorate»
Heller urged the Nicaraguan authorities to punish the officers responsible for the reported abuses, restore the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (Cenidh) and resume dialogue with the UN Human Rights Office.
In this sense, the organizations, including Cenidh, the World Organization Against Torture, IM Defensoras and the Nicaraguan Human Rights Collective Never Again, demand that the State “immediately cease the attacks against people, organizations and communities that defend human rights”, as well as repeal the legal framework “that allows organizations, journalists and social communities, among other actors considered to be in opposition, to be criminalized for their work; and investigate with due diligence the acts perpetrated against indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples.”
