This day marks three years since the second attempt to national dialogue that took place in Nicaragua after the protests of April 2018. To date, the opposition Civic Alliance continues to demand that Daniel Ortega’s regime comply with what was signed, mainly the release of political prisoners and the strengthening of rights and citizen guarantees.
Since the signing of the agreement, in 2019, the dictatorship has enacted repressive laws and imprisoned opposition and union leaders, Juan Sebastián Chamorro, José Adán Aguerri, Max Jerez and José Pallais, who participated in the dialogue table. The organization deplored the increase in the national crisis and the exodus of Nicaraguans.
Related news: Paul Reichler: Ortega is kept in power by the “puppets” of the Nicaraguan Army
The Nicaraguan opposition prepared a series of activities focused on demanding the freedom of political prisoners in the country, in commemoration of the four years since the April rebellion.
The so-called “April Day» will take place mainly in Costa Rica, where it will culminate with a central act on April 23. The opposition organizations denounced that, four years after the insurrection, in Nicaragua “a state of terror has been imposed, justice has not been achieved” for the victims and the “popular cry for freedom and democracy” still persists.
The leaders of the business association Michael Healey and Alvaro Vargas They remain imprisoned, for five months, without their trial being scheduled yet. At the end of January it was revealed that the regime would have lifted the charge for the alleged crime of money laundering and would only prosecute them for alleged “undermining national integrity.”
The former leaders of the Superior Council of Private Enterprise (Cosep), along with political prisoner Edgar Parrales, are the only ones awaiting trial from a group of almost 50 critics of the regime arrested in the electoral context.
The former Nicaraguan ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS), Arturo McFields, asked the 15 member states of the Caribbean Community (Caricom) to speak out in favor of the release of Nicaragua’s political prisoners.
Through a publication on his Twitter account, the former diplomat pointed out that “as an Afro-descendant, he challenges them to speak out… (because) silence makes them accomplices.”
Related news: Political prisoners of “El Chipote”, “monitored” and without the right to talk
Former heads of state and government of Latin America, grouped in the Democratic Initiative of Spain and the Americas (IDEA), denounced the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo for committing “crimes against humanity” against Nicaraguan opponents, subjecting them to “treatment cruel, inhuman and degrading”. They denounce that those imprisoned have been “convicted by justice at the service of the regime” and ask that they be released “immediately.”
The Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (Cenidh) denounced this day that the inmates of the so-called “New Chipote” “are watched 24 hours a day and if the police hear them speak, they punish them.”
The Ortega-Murillo regime received another blow within its circle. the american lawyer Paul Reichler, who served as Ortega’s international legal adviser in the 1980s and rejoined in 2007, decided to resign from that position because, he said, he could not continue defending a “tyrant” who “has destroyed democracy.” The resignation letter would have been sent to Daniel Ortega on March 2.
Paul Reichlerin an interview with Lucía Pineda Ubau, asserted that the Nicaraguan Army “became a shame” for submitting to the orders of the Daniel Ortega dictatorship and failing to protect Nicaraguans.
In addition, he cataloged the sanctioned military chief Julio César Avilés of “puppet”, since it has served and supported the Ortega regime in these four years of crisis, where the dictatorship has clearly violated the human rights of Nicaraguans.
