The Nicaraguan dictatorship has remained completely silent regarding the “investigative” process against the now former presidential advisor and indigenous leader Steadman Fagot Müller, kidnapped by the Army and handed over to the Sandinista Police on charges of alleged drug trafficking and threatening state security, while the Yatama leadership in exile has called on the communities to “rise up.”
Fagot, one of the most visible and veteran indigenous leaders of the North Caribbean Coast, was kidnapped by members of the Nicaraguan Army in the municipality of Waspán on September 14, after he made an incendiary complaint accusing the Army and the Police of being accomplices of the massacre committed by settler invaders on indigenous lands.
Hours later, the Army, assuming police powers, kidnapped the presidential adviser with the rank of minister. He was handed over to the Sandinista Police and to this day, nothing more is known about him.
Related news: Steadman Fagot, the enemy of Sandinismo, turned ally and now kidnapped by his boss Daniel Ortega
In press release number 196-2024, the military institution claims that Fagot Müller intended to carry out criminal activities with elements related to drug trafficking and organized crime, from Honduras, to “steal weapons from military posts located on the banks of the Coco River.” The same note indicates that the indigenous leader would be investigated.
On August 16, Fagot was confirmed as presidential advisor with the rank of minister for policies towards indigenous peoples, thus becoming the first Ortega minister to be officially taken to prison. Nothing is known about the alleged investigations mentioned by the Army, and after eight days of detention, it is also unknown whether he has already been brought before a competent judge or if any formal charges have been brought against him.
Yatama leadership has called for an indigenous uprising
The Ortega-Murillo dictatorship has now kidnapped the three most visible indigenous leaders of the North Caribbean Coast. For a year now, it has kept Brooklyn Rivera, a deputy and top leader of the Yapti Tasba Masraka Nanih Aslatakanka (YATAMA) party, the main political force of the indigenous people, in a condition of “forced disappearance.”
Rivera’s deputy substitute and president of Yatama in the North Caribbean, Nancy Henríquez, has been arbitrarily imprisoned for the same amount of time. And now the co-founder of the indigenous party, Steadman Fagot, has joined the party. Together with Rivera, they were the top leaders of the armed resistance of the indigenous people during the first Sandinista dictatorship in the 1980s.
With the three leaders detained, Haide Merly Salazar, a Yatama leader in exile, recently called on indigenous communities to rise up against injustice and repel invading settlers, while accusing the dictatorship of having arbitrarily kidnapped Fagot, as well as Rivera and Henríquez, for defending the rights of indigenous peoples.
In a video posted on social media on September 18, Salazar called on indigenous people, wherever they are, to organize the defense of their territories. “We will not remain silent. We will denounce wherever it is necessary for the rights of our communities,” he emphasized.
He also warned the regime that the indigenous communities of the Caribbean Coast “do have the courage to defend our lands” and recalled that Fagot, foreseeing his imprisonment as a result of the accusations against the Army and the Police, also warned him that the community members are only waiting for the order to go into resistance.
