The prolonged isolation and solitary confinement to which the political prisoners Dora María Téllez, Ana Margarita Vijil, Suyén Barahona and Tamara Dávila have been subjected, constitute acts of “aggravated torture,” said Paulo Abrão, former executive secretary of the Inter-American Commission on Rights. Humans (IACHR).
The four women are members of the Unión Democrática Renovadora (Unamos), formerly the Movimiento Renovador Sandinista (MRS). They have been illegally detained in a prison complex for more than five months of the Directorate of Judicial Aid (DAJ), known as “andThe new Chipote“.
“To In light of international law, it is aggravated torture because we know about the political motivation, especially against these women, who symbolize the entire struggle of the historic resistance of the Sandinista revolutionary movement, ”Abrão said in an interview with Confidential Radio.
He highlighted that the situation in which the Ortega regime maintains these four women is “clearly a violation of the minimum rules of the well-known Mandela principles, which establish that all inmates must be treated with profound respect, with dignity in their human dimension; and that no inmate may be subjected to torture or ill-treatment or cruel or degrading punishment ”.
In addition, the human rights defender explained that restrictions such as “indefinite and prolonged isolation are restrictions that are characterized as disciplinary sanctions,” which have to be justified, but in the case of the four political prisoners, due to the circumstances in which they were held. that have been applied, “amount to torture, cruel or degrading treatment or punishment”.
He highlighted the urgency of a “strong appeal on these cases (of the political prisoners), and also in the other cases of political prisoners who are arbitrarily detained, with accusations that are generic, because their rights as detainees are being violated there.”
“Priority of attention for Nicaragua”
Aprtoo pointed out that initiatives, such as the proposal made by 15 civil society organizations, which this Thursday presented the report “Dictatorship and repression in Nicaragua: Fight against impunity”, where they ask the United Nations (UN) to “install an internal fact-checking mission for Nicaragua”, they are key “to broaden the observation and maintain the priority of attention in Nicaragua.”
He said that the fact that civil society organizations, victims and victims’ families are making the call, adds to the proposal “a unique sense of legitimacy, which the UN would have to listen to.”
He stressed that the creation of these missions takes place within the framework of the UN Human Rights Committee, where it will have to be voted on by the States, and “the consent of the State is not a determining criterion and neither is the concrete possibility of entering within the State ”.
Abrão mentioned that a mission of the same nature, to the one requested by the 15 Nicaraguan organizations, is working for Venezuela, where the Government did not allow the entry of members and, despite this, the mission is “carrying out its work with a team technical, documenting all the information ”.
The lawyer highlighted that the report released by these 15 organizations, in addition to allowing the characterization linked to the identification of the patterns that characterize crimes against humanity; systematicity, periodicity, continuity, massiveness, is also a documentation tool for future justice processes.
He added that the preparation of this report even has “symbolic” aspects due to the fact that it is the result of a collective effort, and transmits “a message of unity, of democratic resistance, a sign that democratic resistance is still alive and even opening a new cycle of denunciation in a post-electoral context ”.
