The Center for Inter-American Legal Assistance in Human Rights (Calidh), based in Argentina, dedicated International Human Rights Day to political prisoners in Nicaragua by presenting a report on their situation before different bodies of the UN and the IACHR on this matter, the organization reported this Saturday, December 10. .
“The report was prepared by our team with great concern about the multiple human rights violations, including torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment inflicted on people deprived of their liberty for political reasons related to the crisis that Nicaragua has been experiencing since 2018” Calidh said in a statement.
The document was presented to the members of the Committee against Torture and the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, as well as Commissioner Edgar Stuardo Ralón Orellana, Rapporteur on the Rights of Persons Deprived of Liberty and for Prevention and Combat to Torture of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).
Calidh, an organization that this year sued Argentina to investigate officials of the Nicaraguan dictatorshipHe added that he “observes with great concern how the effects of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment extend to the relatives and close friends” of political prisoners.
He exemplified that the police authorities do not allow the detainees the regular visit of relatives, friends and minor children, which goes “against all international standards and the internal laws of the Nicaraguan government.”
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In more than a year of confinement, the captive union leaders in the Directorate of Judicial Assistance, known as “El Nuevo Chipote”, have only been seen twelve times by their relatives, and communication with their minor children has hardly been allowed on one occasion: the recent 7th and 8th of December.
Calidh human rights defenders “are concerned about the effects on the physical and emotional development of children and adolescents, sons and daughters of persons deprived of liberty, as well as older adults in risky conditions who are subjected to intense anguish and systematic by denying them the right to visit their relatives and to know regularly about them”.
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The members of Calidh also documented that the Nicaraguan regime did not provide information on the situation of political prisoners, however, the defenders determined that those deprived for political reasons “receive treatment contrary to human dignity.”
According to the Mechanism for the Recognition of Political Prisoners in Nicaragua, in the country there are around 235 people deprived of their liberty for political reasons, the majority (225) detained after the social protests that began in April 2018. Until November 30 this year there were 209 men and 26 women incarcerated.
