The group of three experts, created for Nicaragua by the United Nations Human Rights Council to investigate the national crisis, must clarify a whole “a universe of serious violations” that have not been documented, affirm human rights defenders. And, if the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo denies them entry into the country, the most practical thing is for them to start working “on the basis of other reports” that have already been generated in the inter-American system.
The group of experts It will be chaired by the German, Jan-Michael Simon, who will be accompanied by the Chilean, Alexandro Álvarez, and the Colombian, Ángela María Buitrago. Three people who know the Central American region very well and who have all the qualities to systematize the serious human rights violations that have occurred in Nicaragua, says Juan Pappier, senior researcher for the Americas division of Human Rights Watch.
For the former attorney general of Guatemala, Claudia Paz y Paz —who was part of the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) that was in Nicaragua in 2018— the creation of this new group of experts represents a “great opportunity” to investigate the crimes that occurred in the country after May 30, 2018, the day the GIEI’s mandate to investigate state repression ended.
“There are various stages of violence after May 30 (which have not been systematized),” warned Paz y Paz. “All the murders and executions that occurred during the “clean-up operation”, all the human rights violations related to the arbitrary deprivation of liberty of political prisoners, violations of procedural guarantees, the criminalizations that have continued to be experienced, torture, harassment that has continued to be seen and that are facts that we could no longer investigate given this temporary limitation, “he added.
“It is very important to build on what the international community has already done,” Pappier warned. Fortunately, all these commissioners —especially Alexandro Álvarez, who was also part of the GIEI in 2018— “know very well the work you have already been doing the international community to document human rights violations in Nicaragua,” he added.
The three members of the group are experts in Criminal Law “who know about (how the) apparatuses of power designed to repress work and who can analyze how the basic principles of human rights are violated through structures of repression in Nicaragua.” Pappier continued.
They can do a lot even when they are away
The former Guatemalan prosecutor appreciated that, although this group of experts does not manage to enter Nicaraguan territory, they can carry out their investigations based on the reports prepared by other organizations,” such as the Nicaragua Nunca+ Human Rights Collective, which has interviewed survivors of torture and people who have been deprived of liberty,” he exemplified.
The group of experts also “can interview the hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans who have had to flee their country, they can have access to criminal files through the lawyers who represent the victims and the alleged suspects in these cases of persecution. politics, you can have access to videos, photographs… In short, there is a wide menu of tools that this group of experts can use to document the situation in Nicaragua”, explained Pappier.
For both human rights defenders, although the Ortega-Murillo regime has experience showing “that it is not interested in international scrutiny”, it is doing very wrong by refusing to receive this group of experts that was created with the support of most of the democracies in Latin America and the Council of Europe.
A roadmap to justice
Paz y Paz also considered that the reconstruction of cases and documentation of what happened will be “an enormous contribution” to establishing the truth, since paradoxically the regime tries to show itself “as if they were the victims”. So, a group of experts with these qualities and international prestige “can make an enormous contribution to the truth about what really happened, about who the victims were and what crimes were committed,” he stressed.
However, “this group of experts alone will not be enough to stop these outrages by Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo,” Pappier said. “This group of experts serves to provide a roadmap for justice in the future, serves to show that the international community is still concerned about Nicaragua and serves to increase pressure… But it will not be enough to stop a dictatorship that is completely out of control. , who knows no limits and who is willing to do anything to cling to power indefinitely,” he continued.
In the last four years in Nicaragua also “there have been restrictions on absolute freedom, restrictions on freedom of association, restrictions on freedom of expression, there is a whole catalog of human rights violations that must be documented and these contributions to the truth in the medium term can help guarantee access to justice for the victims”, he concluded.
