The invented crime of “border control evasion” included in the initiative to reform the General Immigration and Immigration Law and the Penal Code, sent by the dictator Daniel Ortega to his deputies, reveals the dictatorship’s fear of the opposition an imminent internal rebellion, which includes desertions of its own militants.
This Tuesday, November 18, Ortega ordered his political operators who serve as deputies, in the National Assembly, to reform 68 articles, add seven and repeal 31, of the General Law of Migration and Immigration, and add one to the Penal Code of Nicaragua (CPN).
Among the most questioned and threatening reforms is the addition of article 318 bis to the Nicaraguan Penal Code (CPN), which establishes “evasion of border control” as a crime.
This new rule states that anyone who “enters, leaves or attempts to leave the national territory in an irregular manner, evading immigration controls at border posts or at any point, is entitled to a prison sentence of 2 to 6 years and up to 1,000 days of fines.” not authorized, for the purposes of undermining the integrity, independence, sovereignty and self-determination of the Nation, compromising peace, altering the constitutional order, promoting or proposing to conspire and induce acts terrorists or economic and social destabilization of the country.
But, the message for his own militants who may flee and abandon the ship of the dictatorship is even clearer, when in a following paragraph of that same article that he adds to the CPN, Ortega increases the penalty for those who leave for ” “blind spots” for “treasonous” purposes.
«When the evasion of border control, is for the purposes of committing the crime of Betrayalprovided for and sanctioned in article 409 of the Penal Code; “the penalty to be imposed will be increased by one third in its minimum and maximum limits.”
Dictatorship is in panic and seeks to frighten opponents and their bases
For the lawyer and opposition leader in exile, Juan Diego Barberenathe reforms promoted by the dictatorship appear to be directed against the opposition and also against dissidents and possible dissidents within the regime’s own ranks.
Interviewed by the director of Article 66Álvaro Navarro, for the program In Contact, Lawyer Juan Diego Barberena analyzed the Immigration reform initiative and agreed that the invented crime of border evasion for the purposes of betrayal It is “applicable to officials and workers of the public administration and its activists.”
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«The direct message is to the militants of the Sandinista Front, to the workers of the Public Administration: “be careful that if you want to leave, you want to desert, and if you also do it in this illegal way, of course we are going to apply this law to you.” and they are going to go to jail,” said the lawyer.
He recalled that the dictatorship can no longer only apply the crimes of undermining national integrity, which are those that have been applied to the majority of opponents who have been imprisoned, denationalized, banished and forced into exile, but that they can also now apply evasion of positions. borderers.
Army to detain migrants
Another analysis that the exiled opposition leader highlights is that we must not lose sight of the fact that it is the Army that monitors the borders and will now find itself detaining Nicaraguans for entering their own country.
As a lawyer, Barberena warned that until now, the Army does not have the power to carry out these arrests at the borders since, still, internal order functions are the responsibility of the Police.
Anyone can be arrested at the borders
Likewise, the lawyer pointed out that as a result of the high discretion with which the new laws are empowered to dictators and their political operators, “in Nicaragua there is a high risk that Nicaraguan migrants, even those who cross the border daily through irregular means because “They go to see their family, they go to work, they could be affected.”
