Following the constant attacks on the Mayangna Sauni As community, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) requested the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) extend provisional measures in the matter “Inhabitants of the Communities of the Miskitu Indigenous People of the North Caribbean Coast Region regarding Nicaragua”, with the objective of including the inhabitants of Musawas and Wilú.
The IACHR has made this request because it considers that “the residents of the identified communities are in an extremely serious and urgent situation of irreparable damage to their rights.”
Likewise, the agency specified that “on February 13, 2022, it granted precautionary measures in favor of the residents of the Musawas and Wilú communities. Despite the IACHR’s requests to obtain information from the State, no response was received on the measures adopted to address the risk situation.”
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The human rights defender entity also denounced that “serious acts of violence have occurred in the Musawas and Wilú communities, consisting of death threats, kidnappings, the presence of heavily armed third parties seeking to appropriate the community’s lands and, recently, the violent murder of members of the community by third parties, called “settlers”, which led to the forced displacement of residents of the communities”.
“The presence of the settlers would generate strong territorial pressure towards the community, who would be prevented from accessing certain areas of the territory. All this in the context of claiming the ancestral territories of the Miskitu and Mayangna Sauni As indigenous people and the regularization processes that take place in said area,” he said.
Nicaraguan state absent
The IACHR also stated that the Nicaraguan State is the most absent in this “context of severe conflict” between the inhabitants of the Mayangna territory and the settlers, because the Ortega dictatorship has maintained a hermetic position on this situation, which even with the resolutions of the body has taken action on the matter.
Therefore, the entity anticipates that conflict situations “such as those reported could recur. This includes the accelerated destruction of their sources of subsistence for the communities, as well as the irreparable impact on their cultural identity as a result of the abandonment of their ancestral territories and the loss of community life.”
“The Commission considers that the rights of the inhabitants of the Musawas and Wilú indigenous communities are in a situation of extreme risk in the framework of the context of claiming ancestral territories,” it reiterated.
“In accordance with the provisions of Article 63.2 of the American Convention and Article 27 of the Rules of Procedure of the Inter-American Court, the Commission asked the Court to order the State to protect and guarantee life, personal and territorial integrity, and cultural identity in favor of the members of the Musawas and Wilú communities, as well as people who have had to leave the communities and wish to return,” he added.
