The non-governmental Permanent Commission on Human Rights (CPDH) denounced this Tuesday that the Government of Nicaragua asked the National Assembly (Parliament) for its closure and its illegalization to prevent them from documenting the alleged abuses of authority.
“There is no will, on the part of the Government (of President Daniel Ortega), for there to be human rights organizations that are documenting the abuses that are being committed in this country,” said the executive secretary of the CPDH, Marcos Carmona, at a press conference. .
According to the activist, the CPDH is the last organization that legally promotes and defends human rights in Nicaragua, since since December 2018 the Government has stripped the legal personality of different similar NGOs, including the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights. (Cenidh).
Related news: Regime orders to remove the legal status of the CPDH and 24 other organizations
In Nicaragua, with the vote of the Sandinista deputies and their allies, at least 112 Nicaraguan NGOs have been outlawed since December 2018, eight months after a popular revolt broke out over controversial social security reforms described as a coup attempt of State by President Ortega.
The last 25 NGOs, including the Nicaraguan affiliate of Operación Sonrisas, were annulled on March 17.
Among the organizations that have been affected are NGOs that defend human rights, medical, feminist, educational, universities, environmentalists, indigenous, journalists, and think tanks, among others.
The Executive has also canceled the registrations and perpetual numbers of four American and six European NGOs.
In addition, in 2018 it terminated the mission of a delegation from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and another from the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (Acnudh).
THEY SAVE COMPLAINTS IN DIGITAL FILES
Carmona maintained that, with the Nicaraguan government’s decision, “they are not only affecting the institution as such, they are affecting the entire Nicaraguan people, because in some way it was the only institution that we were (legally) to document the arbitrariness and abuses that are committed by the different powers of the State and by the different officials”.
According to the request of the Executive, which is expected to be presented tomorrow before the plenary session of the Parliament, with an official majority, the CPDH and 24 other NGOs have failed to comply with their legal obligations, such as not registering as “foreign agents”, or not delivering their financial statements with their detailed breakdowns of income, expenses, trial balance and details of donations, nor their boards of directors.
Related news: Government avoids receiving financial report from the CPDH
The CPDH representative recalled that the organization had already tried to deliver said documents to the Ministry of the Interior and that the ministry refused to receive them.
On March 1, the CPDH had already publicly denounced that the Nicaraguan government wanted to “illegalize” it, because it refused to receive its documentation.
Carmona, who described the state decision as “painful,” especially one day after the CPDH celebrated its 45th anniversary, said he did not understand why the NGO was canceled by the same Sandinista deputies whom he defended in past decades.
The defender added that by law the assets of the CPDH will pass into the hands of the Government, but he affirmed that the information on the cases of opponents whom they defend are safe in digital formats.
Since April 2018, Nicaragua has been experiencing a sociopolitical crisis that was accentuated in the elections last November, when Ortega was re-elected for a fifth term, fourth consecutive and second along with his wife, Rosario Murillo, as vice president, with his main contenders in prison.
