Human rights activist Berta Valle, wife of former presidential candidate Félix Maradiaga imprisoned in Nicaragua, asked the international community for help on Wednesday to secure the release of “more than 190 political prisoners.”
“The international community has to see Nicaragua and has to help us in this clamor. The more time passes, the crisis deepens. This is urgent, these are human lives that must be saved,” Valle said in an interview with Efe in Costa Rica.
The activist, who lives in exile in the United States, visited Costa Rica to participate in a forum on freedom and human rights, and also took the opportunity to meet with Nicaraguan friends and communicators who fled to this neighboring country during the sociopolitical crisis that Nicaragua has been experiencing since April 2018.
Valle acknowledged that in the international context there are other deep human rights crises such as the war in Ukraine, but reiterated his call to the international community to listen to the voice of the relatives of Nicaraguan political prisoners.
“Our cry as family members is that they help us and, as my husband said, for the nonviolent struggle to be effective we need the solidarity of the world,” she declared.
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Valle said that this is the worst crisis that Nicaragua has suffered in its recent history and that for it to be resolved there must be “the will of the regime” of President Daniel Ortega, and the interest of the international community to apply “mechanisms that can help us achieve reunification.” with our families.”
“There are more than 190 political prisoners. Unfortunately, every day there are arbitrary arrests, the last people imprisoned are priests of the Catholic Church, Bishop Monsignor Álvarez is in jail at home and that says a lot about the conditions in which we are in Nicaragua at the level of repression,” Valle lamented.
The activist, who says she cannot return to Nicaragua because she is accused of treason against the country, denounced that the prisoners do not have access to medical attention, they are allowed very few hours of sunshine, they are rationed food, which she qualifies as torture that they are harming the health of those people.
“We have realized in the few visits that they are suffering conditions of torture because there is an intention of the regime to have practices very similar to those used in Latin America at other times, such as white torture: there is isolation and absolute incommunicado deprivation of our relatives, the food is reduced and there is a radical weight loss”, he asserted.
Valle indicated that in Nicaragua there is a humanitarian crisis suffered by political prisoners, but also due to emigration, since it is estimated that this year “200,000 Nicaraguans will leave due to the lack of opportunities, but also because they have to protect their integrity and security.”
Related news: Berta Valle asks the Oslo Freedom Forum not to forget the thousands of Nicaraguans who suffer from Ortega’s repression
The activist said she was moved by her visit to Costa Rica because she feels close to her country and for her that “represents a lot”, but she lamented that “it is unfair that a citizen is prevented from returning to his country only because it does not coincide with the ruling party ideas.
The Government of Nicaragua, chaired by the Sandinista Daniel Ortega, exhibited this Wednesday, for the second consecutive day, a new group of opponents who were arrested more than a year ago and who are considered political prisoners by humanitarian organizations, after their relatives denounced that they suffered malnutrition and extreme weight loss.
This group of people includes the husband of Berta Valle, the academic and leader Félix Maradiaga, one of the aspiring presidential candidates for the opposition who intended to challenge President Daniel Ortega in the elections last November.
Nicaragua has been going through a political and social crisis since April 2018 with massive anti-government protests that, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), were suffocated with armed attacks that left 355 dead in the first year, of which Ortega has admitted 200.
