Organizations defending the rights of people in Nicaragua reported this Wednesday that they expect the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) to delve into the case of the so-called “political prisoners” in the Central American country.
“We hope that the Court declares that the State of Nicaragua is not complying with its resolutions, but also that it includes this element, of violation of the rights of family members, that it considers them as torture, because its practices are a State policy,” he said. Wendy Flores, a lawyer from the Nicaraguan Human Rights Collective, Never Again, told EFE by telephone.
The defender gave her statements at the conclusion of a hearing of the Inter-American Court, held in Costa Rica, on the supervision of the provisional measures ordered for 76 convicts, considered “political prisoners” by humanitarian organizations.
“The political prisoners in the ‘El Chipote’ torture center have served 75 days without visits, their physical and psychological integrity is unknown. Their lives are in danger,” the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights recalled on its social networks.
Related news: Relatives of political prisoners in Nicaragua ask the Inter-American Court to demand their freedom
The concern about the visits to these inmates is not limited to their state of health, who allegedly suffer ill-treatment and torture, but also for their relatives.
According to Flores, the rights of the relatives are violated because they are prevented from seeing the prisoners with the regularity required by Nicaraguan law, but also because of the humiliating treatment they suffer when they are allowed to enter the prisons.
“The regime has implemented a regime of torture against family members that is based on solitary confinement, harassment, surveillance, abusive searches and sexual abuse during visits, the boys and girls of political prisoners have also been harshly subjected to requisitions, affecting them as one more extension of the cruelty with which arbitrary deprivation of liberty is being treated in Nicaragua,” Flores explained.
At the hearing, the families of those affected emphasized that the children of some “political prisoners” have not been able to see their parents, even when some of them announced that they would go on a hunger strike if the situation did not change, something that was not known. has been able to verify due to the isolation of the convicts.
The Inter-American Court has issued various resolutions in which it orders the State of Nicaragua to release the detainees included in the case, in the context of the socio-political crisis that the country is experiencing, as well as to protect their lives, access to health, integrity and freedom. staff, no response.
Since the massive anti-government protests of 2018, Nicaragua has been experiencing a sociopolitical crisis that in its first year left at least 355 dead, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), and that has more than 200 people in prison.
