The recent kidnappings of two young members of the Nicaraguan University Alliance (AUN), correspond to a pattern of detention carried out by the Nicaraguan Army that “is not common”, and that until now had been limited, above all, to peasants, denounced Douglas Castro, member of the Board of Directors of AUN.
The young Mildred Rayo and Miguel Flores and a third person who accompanied them, but does not belong to the youth group, were arrested on Tuesday by Army soldiers, near the Sapoá river, in the municipality of Cárdenas, department of Rivas, bordering Costa Rica.
“The They detained them, asked them questions and called them on the radio, they did not release them, nor did they hand them over to the Police. This is one of the issues that draws our attention because, as we understand, this pattern of detention by the Army is not common, it has happened above all, with peasants”, highlighted the manager in an interview in the program Tonightwhich is broadcast on social networks and the YouTube channel of CONFIDENTIALfor television censorship.
“When they have detained people, the Army immediately turns them over to the Police, but in the case of Mildred and Miguel, no,” he added.
The organization explained that, through the geolocation of Rayo’s cell phone, they determined that the young people were taken to an Army property, located in Las Colinas, in Managua. His relatives went to that place, but they were told that there was no one there. They also went to police stations, including the Judicial Assistance Directorate (DAJ), known as El Chipote, but they did not receive answers about his whereabouts.
Consulted by the Efe agency, a spokesman for the Nicaraguan Army said he knew nothing about that complaint.
“There is no official information” about the whereabouts of the young people, Castro said. Therefore, “they are officially missing.”
they were not exiled
Castro stressed that the young people resided in Nicaragua and had been victims of constant siege by the Police and operators of the Sandinista Front in their neighborhoods. The last two weeks, Flores received a visit from the Citizen Power Councils of his sector, warning him that the municipal elections were near, that “I was careful, I was relaxing or I was lifting masses”.
“There is already a persecution against young people from AUN and other (opposition) organizations,” said the opponent, who recounted that police harassment has affected all members of the organization and several have fled to the United States.
Castro pointed out that this persecution of the regime against the youth opposition “could only be explained based on the paranoia that It is thought that we are going to be carrying out activities, and even if we did activities, they do not go against the Political Constitution, they only exercise our rights.”
In 2021 they were in charge of denouncing the electoral fraud, in which Ortega, together with his wife and vice president, Rosario Murillo, was screwed in power for another consecutive period without political competition, with the main opposition leaders imprisoned for treason against the country.
“We are not doing any activism in the streets, or anything like that because a sword of Damocles hangs over us,” Castro said. At the same time, he assured that there is an underreporting of complaints about arrests due to the terror imposed on family members.
Photo: taken from social networks
Four AUN members jailed
Lesther Aleman and Max Jerez, President and Vice President of AUN, respectively, were the first members of this youth organization to be imprisoned by the Ortega regime. Both young people have been in prison since 2021, along with twenty political prisoners, sentenced in the Judicial Assistance Directorate (DAJ), El Chipote, to between seven and thirteen years in prison for crimes of “conspiracy” and “propagation of fake news”.
Rayo and Flores are the last political prisoners of the Ortega regime, which maintains 220 prisoners of conscience in the different prison systems, according to the Mechanism for the Recognition of Political Prisoners.
AUN is part of the Civic Alliance for Justice and Democracy, who represented the opposition in the two dialogue attempts that took place in 2018 and 2019 with Daniel Ortega and his officials. Since 2021, like the rest of the organizations, they have suffered political persecution for opposing the Government.
*The complete interview with Douglas Castro will be broadcast tonight on the social networks and YouTube channel of CONFIDENTIAL.
