The books were dusted in his house. The young university student Samantha Jirón could not read them. She was detained in a central point of Nicaragua and accused of violating the Cybercrime Law and the National Sovereignty Law. She was subsequently convicted.
Jirón is one of the 14 political prisoners arrested in the last year by the government of Daniel Ortega, but she is also the youngest, at just 22 years old. Her most recent birthday was spent in prison.
She is the eldest of three siblings who live with her mother, Carolina Jirón, who remembers her daughter as a “cheerful, outgoing, intelligent and outstanding” person.
Since she was little, Jirón excelled in her studies and, thanks to that, she obtained scholarships, emphasizes her mother.
Her crime was to oppose the Ortega government, say the women activists who are calling for Jirón’s freedom.
“Her critical thinking has kept her going until the last moment, even when she was found guilty, she stood her ground and told the judge that she was innocent and that it was all a farce,” said a source who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation from the judge. government.
Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo, have started a fierce war with the organizations of human rightsbut above all with the feminists who turned their backs on the president when he was denounced for alleged sexual abuse of his stepdaughter, Zoailamérica Narváez.
“My mother turned her back on me at that time,” he told the voice of america Zoilamérica Narváez, in reference to the complaint.
The activists point out that despite the fact that Murillo is a woman, she has “machista” practices and orders the persecution of critical women for their ambition for power.
Similarly, the Ortega-Murillo binomial has imprisoned former guerrilla commander Dora María Téllez and opposition leader Suyen Barahona, president of Unamos, a left-wing organization founded by Sandinista dissidents, as well as other women dedicated to political activism in Nicaragua.
The activist Violeta Granera is a Nicaraguan sociologist with liberal roots, graduated in France, and is another of the political figures of the Ortega government. Her son, Julio Sandino Granera, has denounced that the political prisoner is thin and is in “inhumane” conditions in the El Chipote prison.
Granera sleeps on a concrete bed, and because of the cold, she has to use a mat to cover herself from the weather, her son said recently.
Similarly, other women stand out, such as the opponent Ana Margarita Vigil, the human rights lawyer María Oviedo, the former first lady María Fernanda Flores de Alemán and the former presidential candidate Cristiana Chamorro, the latter two under house arrest.
This March 8, International Women’s Day, some organizations have called for the release of political prisoners and claim that their lives are in danger.
“We are calling on men and women, human rights organizations, leaders, artists, young people, activists from all sectors and the media, to join the campaign and add their voices to the clamor of the families of the prisoners. policies,” said the Costa Rica-based organization “Sé Humano.”
Former opposition deputy Edipcia Dubón indicated that the women who are “unjustly detained” today are “under terrible conditions of torture in Nicaraguan prisons” and that their lives “are in imminent danger.”
“Activists, human rights defenders, presidential candidates, directors of NGOs, students, mothers, workers who have not committed any crime are recognized,” Dubón stressed.
The government, for its part, has not recognized the conditions of the women prisoners and this March 8, without referring to the subject, it sent a message.
“We celebrate the courage, dignity and pride of the women protagonists of our blessed Nicaragua. We celebrate ourselves as that beautiful revolution of all. We consolidate our rights from the honor of recognizing ourselves as full citizens, full of love,” said the presidency in a message published on Tuesday in El 19 Digital, the official government website.
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