Costa Rica, Ecuador and the Dominican Republic on Friday deplored Nicaragua’s “arbitrary and illegal” decision to revoke the nationality and confiscate the property of 135 opposition members who were released from prison and transferred to Guatemala a week ago, the Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry reported.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) also criticized this decision by Managua, which raised the number of Nicaraguan opponents deprived of their nationality since the beginning of 2023 to 451.
The three “member countries of the Alliance for Development in Democracy deplore the arbitrary and illegal decision of the Nicaraguan regime” against the new group of former political prisoners, says a joint statement.
A court in Managua on Tuesday ordered the “loss of Nicaraguan nationality of 135 people convicted of criminal acts that threatened the sovereignty, independence and self-determination of the Nicaraguan people” and “ordered the confiscation of all the assets of the convicted persons.”
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Through the mediation of the United States, the group was sent to Guatemala last week.
The three nations of the Alliance called on Nicaragua “to restore the rights of its citizens.”
They stressed that according to the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights, everyone has the right to nationality and no one should be arbitrarily deprived of it.”
For its part, the IACHR said in a statement that it “repudiates that these releases have been accompanied by the arbitrary deprivation of Nicaraguan nationality and confiscation of property” of the 135.
“This measure constitutes one of the most severe forms of repression currently employed by the regime, as it has profound consequences for these people and their families, leaving them in a situation of extreme vulnerability,” added the IACHR, based in Washington.
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The IACHR is an entity of the Organization of American States (OAS), a bloc from which Nicaragua withdrew due to its questions regarding the reelection of President Daniel Ortega in 2021.
The Ortega government has tightened legislation and repression following opposition protests in 2018. Since then, some 5,500 NGOs have been closed and their assets confiscated.
These protests left more than 300 dead in three months, according to the UN, and since then thousands of Nicaraguans have gone into exile and hundreds have been expelled and their property confiscated.
