It surprises few that Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo try to deceive about what is happening in Nicaragua, what is scary is that even though no one believes them, they insist on the same discourse. “We continue working for peace, stability, the common good, justice, constitutional and social order, and the human rights of all” in Nicaragua, they say.
These comments are found in the official document of responses to the abundant recommendations of the countries that evaluated Nicaragua in 2019. These are empty words when you see the reality in the country: a nation without basic freedoms, without political life, without democracy , where human rights are violated and where the laws are below what a septuagenarian couple that has already been in power for 17 years says. And the international community knows it.
Under the façade of a supposed progress that no one sees, the Ortega-Murillo regime maintains that the “constructive recommendations” of the 2019 Universal Periodic Review (UPR) allowed them to “improve respect for and restitution of human rights.” They believe that the world does not know that they are the rulers of a country that lacks true political opposition because it arrested them, banished them, and stole their property as punishment.
Daniel Ortega’s regime continues to fail to guarantee justice for the 355 opponents murdered during the 2018 civic rebellion, as a result of an order that he and his wife gave to police and parapolice to crush the demonstrations. For six years, anyone who raises their voice in Nicaragua has paid with prison, exile, and the loss of their nationality.
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The regime’s report presented to the Human Rights Council seems more like a fictional exercise than a faithful portrait of the devastating reality that devastates Nicaragua, say analysts and human rights defenders who have also suffered persecution by the dictatorship.
The ignored reality
For Salvador Marenco, of the Nicaragua Never Again Human Rights Collective, the document does not come even one centimeter closer to the reality of the country. “It lacks any foundation,” he says. “It is far from the reality that exists in the country,” he said. “We are clear that the Ortega-Murillo regime is not accountable to anyone but itself and lies all the time,” says the activist.
While the report claims that the Office of the Attorney General for the Defense of Human Rights (PDDH) “promotes, defends and protects the constitutional guarantees and human rights of Nicaraguans,” the truth is much darker.
According to Marenco, this institution has ceased to be a bastion of justice and has become a tool at the service of impunity. He even recalled that since 2019, the aforementioned office was unknown as an independent entity defending human rights and classified as another appendix of the regime.
In March 2019, the PDDH was demoted to class “B” on the scale of the Global Alliance of National Institutions for the Protection of Human Rights and in 2021, according to a report from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights United, the entity was sanctioned for not defending the rights of Nicaraguans.
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“In particular, as a national torture prevention mechanism and in order to fully fulfill its mandate, it must thoroughly investigate allegations of torture and ill-treatment of detainees, particularly those committed since April 2018,” the UN resolution stated. about the national office.
32 official cards against the closure of 5,600 NGOs
«The Attorney General’s Office does not carry out investigations, it has no independence. “He has bowed to the dictatorship, guaranteeing impunity,” the human rights defender emphasizes.
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This disconnect between the official narrative and reality is blatant. While the regime boasts of having developed 32 human rights booklets to promote “harmonious coexistence,” it has closed more than 5,600 organizations that worked directly with the vulnerable population.
“How can we talk about harmony when what we experience is a constant state of terror?” Marenco asks. The activist goes further: “We do not live in harmonious coexistence, but quite the opposite: we live in a state of permanent terror,” he accuses.
For many opponents, the streets of Nicaragua, “once full of hope, are now enveloped in palpable fear emanating from a State that has transformed the country into an open-air prison.”
Human Rights in rhetoric, not in reality
The regime also attempts to “paint” an image of progress in protecting the rights of LGBTI people. In its response to the human rights examination, it assures that discrimination based on “sexual choice” is sanctioned and that there are specialized protocols to guarantee the rights of this group in the National Penitentiary System.
But, once again, words and reality seem to belong to parallel universes. «What sanctions have been given for discrimination? “What processes have been implemented to punish these crimes?” asks Marenco.
His organization has received numerous testimonies from LGBTI people who have suffered violence and stigmatization in Nicaraguan prisons. Stories of abuse accumulate while the regime remains impassive, proclaiming its false commitment to justice and its marriage to impunity.
For example, the murder of Eddy Montes Preslin, in 2019, is an indelible scar in the recent history of Nicaraguan prisons. He was shot to death during a prison protest demanding better prison conditions.
Despite promises by a regime Special Prosecutor for Prisons to “investigate” what happened, a conclusion about the murder was never known. There was no investigation, no report, or official statement on that case. To this day, silence and impunity reign over that crime.
A diplomatic and calculated report
Curiously, the language used in this national report is notably different from the bellicose discourse that usually emanates from the Ortega-Murillo regime, Marenco assesses.
Instead of diatribes full of hate, insults and stigmatization, the document adopts a diplomatic tone. For Marenco, this change is not coincidental. “It is interesting to wonder what the objective of this change is,” he reflects. “Is it perhaps a strategy to wash its image in the face of an international community that increasingly views it with more suspicion?” he asks.
Softer language, however, does not change the facts: Since 2019, the regime has intensified a system of widespread torture.
No “polished words” can hide the pain of thousands of Nicaraguans who live under a brutal dictatorship that, according to human rights experts, has made crime against humanity its own hallmark.
Recommendations ignored, sanctions avoided
In this framework of cynicism and repression, many of the recommendations made by the international community have been completely ignored by the regime.
Bulgaria, for example, recommended restoring the autonomy of the PDDH, but there was no response from Ortega in his national report. Similarly, requests from Slovakia, Spain, Georgia and Switzerland to allow international human rights organizations to enter the country fell on deaf ears.
Spain went further by requesting the return of the OHCHR and the IACHR to Nicaragua, entities that, had their return been allowed, could have testified to the seriousness of the situation. However, the regime chose the path of isolation, “shielding itself” from international observation.
An impotent international community
Paulo Abrão, former executive secretary of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), does not hesitate to point out that the human rights situation in Nicaragua “is very serious and worsens every day.”
The regime has implemented what he calls “a criminal law of the enemy,” where justice is nothing more than a manipulated spectacle, and impunity reigns unrestricted. Abrão is emphatic in stating that Nicaragua is under “state terrorism”, and makes an urgent call to the international community to maintain pressure on Ortega and Murillo.
The “great prison” of Nicaragua
Gabriel Putoy, an exiled professor, crudely describes the reality that his country is experiencing. “There is no independent judicial power, only a band of political operators who violate the elementary norms of due process.”
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Citizens, previously protected by the judicial system, are now at the mercy of a repressive apparatus that captures, tortures and condemns mercilessly. Putoy regrets that Nicaragua has become “a big prison” where human rights are violated with impunity every day. “The Police are complicit, the Prosecutor’s Office is ineffective and the judges have become pawns of the regime,” he adds.
Putoy’s conclusion resonates as a grim warning for the world: “Nicaragua is a totalitarian dictatorship that clings to power at any cost, ignoring the clamor of the international community and its own people,” he denounces.
And as long as the Ortega-Murillo regime continues to cling to a false and dangerous narrative, the suffering of Nicaraguans will continue to grow, buried under a blanket of terror and impunity that has driven a million of its people into exile, exile, and the risk of death. Search for life in distant lands.
