After relatives of the political prisoners held in the Judicial Assistance Directorate (DAJ) in Managua denounced that the Ortega dictatorship continues with its methods of torture, such as denying opponents the right to read, a psychology specialist explained to Article 66 that this measure can be “destructive for a person deprived of liberty”.
And it is that after the ninth visit to the political prisoners in “El Nuevo Chipote”, their families They denounced that the Nicaraguan regime ordered the jailers to even remove the labels of the few products that allow them to enter the parcel.
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The clinical psychologist and former political prisoner Roger Martinez indicated that “for every prisoner it is important to have recreation options to keep their minds agile and activities that are useful to them, because spending months and years deprived of liberty, it can be a distressing, hopeless experience and could even be destructive for a person.” «The boredom that prisoners experience daily due to confinement, for doing nothing; just seeing the four walls of the cell; In addition to generating prison stress, his mood is affected, ”explained an expert.
He stressed that the repressive actions carried out by the Ortega Police are stronger “even when the person is innocent, such as the political prisoners of the Sandinista dictatorship.”
«The boredom that prisoners experience daily due to confinement, for doing nothing; just seeing the four walls of the cell; In addition to generating prison stress, obviously as a result of this, his mood is affected », he remarked.
As for denying them access to a Bible or other reading material, the expert pointed out that “reading books can change the fact of being behind bars in many ways; reading opens a new world beyond the narrow walls (…) and therefore the days spent inside a cell are felt less».
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«For a political prisoner with the habit of reading and not doing it, it makes him uncomfortable and I think that is what the dictatorship is looking for, to make the political prisoners the most uncomfortable during their stay as a form of revenge for having revealed themselves in front of the illegitimate authority that the dictatorship at this time represents,” he emphasized.
He added that all this is part of Ortega’s psychological torture to damage “not only the body as they do with beatings and confinement, but also the minds of political prisoners.”
Martínez concluded that the treatment that is being given to political prisoners is similar to what prisoners of conscience experienced in 2018. “Torture, physical, psychological through isolation, even in the prison system is the same. The food is always of poor quality, the water is very bad, the mistreatment and harassment by the security guards is the same.
Currently, in Nicaragua there are more than 190 political prisoners, however the treatment received by those who are locked up in “El Chipote” has been worse (according to their relatives) who have to wait up to more than two months to be able to visit them and find out if remain the same or in worse condition.