After the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) granted provisional measures for 45 political prisoners and ordered their release from the Ortega regime, the former secretary of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) Paulo Abrão told Article 66 that within the scope of the Inter-American System, the Court is the last instance that family members of opponents can demand justice.
“So the importance of this resolution has to do with the fact that there is legal support to join the demands of the international community in its diplomatic relations with Nicaragua,” said the human rights defender.
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He explained that in this instance it is not about “simple victims’ claims,” but that the Nicaraguan regime “does not comply with international human rights law.”
It affirms that if the dictator Ortega continues not to abide by the implementation of these resolutions, “it is characterized as a pariah country before the international community.”
It also indicated that from the point of view of the victims it is essential to generate the effort of their claims. “Based on this international decision, legal defenses can be incorporated before the national justice system.”
There are no expectations that Ortega will meet
From Abrão’s point of view, there are no expectations that the Nicaraguan government will comply with the resolutions of the Inter-American Court, however he points out that this does not indicate “the measures are not important, because a fortress is increasingly being created around of the characterization of his political persecutions».
As for Ortega not complying with the demand of the Inter-American Court, Abrão stated that Nicaragua would continue to be among the countries that do not share the typical values of democracies with the international community.
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“In the sphere of the Inter-American Commission, this decision by Ortega will most likely cause Nicaragua to be in its fourth chapter in the list of countries with the most human rights violations and it may be that eventually the political organs of the OAS will use the unfulfilled resolutions to take additional measures in relation to Nicaragua,” he added.
Although he pointed out that since Nicaragua has already denounced the Inter-American Charter and that it has said that it will not submit to the inter-American system, these decisions of the Court have a more symbolic than practical effect so that the situations of the victims are changed, “But this reinforces the horizon of justice, because when the day of an effective democratic transition of the country arrives, these decisions will be able to function as evidence for the implementation of a future national justice.”
Months before, the Court issued other resolutions in favor of detained persons such as former presidential candidates Cristiana Chamorro and Félix Maradiaga.
The deprivation of liberty for political reasons, pointed out by humanitarian organizations, was accentuated in 2018, when Nicaraguans came out en masse to protest against Ortega and were reduced with armed attacks.
To date, the Sandinista dictatorship has more than 200 political prisoners in the country’s different prisons and the list continues to grow due to the recent wave of arrests.
