Former dissident Sandinista guerrilla Mónica Baltodano, 67, denounced this Monday that the Nicaraguan government withheld and did not renew her passport, which prevents her from carrying out procedures or leaving Costa Rica, where she has lived since last August after fleeing her country.
In a complaint published on her social networks, Baltodano, former comrade-in-arms of the current president and Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega, stated that both she and her husband, also an ex-guerrilla Julio López Campo, and her son Umanzor Campos Baltodano, “we they denied the renewal of our passports.”
According to the complaint, the renewal of the passports was denied to the López Baltodano family “after carrying out all the procedures at the Nicaraguan Consulate in Costa Rica.”
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“They told us that ‘per instructions from Immigration in Managua, we had to carry out the procedure in Nicaragua,’ when they know that we are exiled to avoid being imprisoned like many opponents,” said Baltodano, who was among the guerrillas who led the insurrection that led to the fall of dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle in 1979.
She asserted that, by denying the renewal of her passport, the Government of Nicaragua violates the human rights of her and her family, and they are “restricted to remain in Costa Rica.”
There is also “an abuse of authority”, because by making that notification “verbally and informally, they restrict the possibility of appealing against the decision itself,” he added.
According to a resolution of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), the life and personal integrity of the ex-guerrilla’s family had been at “serious risk” since 2018, when her daughter, the lawyer Mónica López Baltodano, left Nicaragua, after defend the rights of peasants in the south of the country.
Baltodano, her husband and her son fled to Costa Rica last August, amid a wave of arrests that put more than 40 opposition leaders in prison in the context of the November 2021 elections, in which Ortega was re-elected. for his fifth term, fourth consecutive and second together with his wife, Rosario Murillo, as vice president, with his main contenders in jail or exile.
The retention and non-renewal of passports had already been denounced by different people related to the opposition in Nicaragua, as well as by independent journalists.
Different non-official media have also reported anonymous complaints about the withholding of passports from Sandinista officials and militants inside Nicaragua.
More than 108,000 Nicaraguans have gone into exile since 2018, mainly to Costa Rica and the United States, motivated by the sociopolitical crisis and its economic effects, according to data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
