60 days have passed since the National Police arbitrarily arrested the young opponent Jason Salazar Rugama and from that moment his whereabouts and what condition he is in are unknown. The April 19 University Movement (MU19A) denounced that the authorities have not provided more information to the family of the prisoner of conscience and have not allowed him to be visited.
Faced with this situation, the opposition organization has declared that Salazar Rugama is in “status of enforced disappearance”a common pattern of the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo to create anxiety in the relatives of political prisoners.
«Jasson Salazar is a young man committed to the fight for freedom and justice in Nicaragua, and his kidnapping is a sample of the oppressive regime that has been established in our country. We cannot allow the voice of those of us who fight for a better future for Nicaragua to be silenced with this new modality of repression through kidnappings,” the MU19A said in a statement.
Related news: They accuse an Ortega magistrate of hiding Jasson Salazar’s judicial file
The political movement also maintained that they are “alarmed” by the way in which the Ortega and Murillo administration, through its Police, “instills terror in the public kidnapping Nicaraguans from minors to the elderly, intimidating and harassing families to keep quiet and denying official information on the whereabouts of the people they kidnap, making this a repetitive pattern in the last two months.”
Salazar Rugama was captured on April 4 at his home in Managua by a contingent of about 20 police officers. He is supposedly being held in the preventive cells of the District III police station in the capital.
On May 19, the Ortega justice accused the young opponent of alleged crimes of “treason against the homeland”. According to the MU19A, the criminal case was given “complex processing”, which doubles the procedural times for the court to resolve the case. The initial hearing is scheduled for this coming June 7.
SOS by Jason Salazar
The opposition bloc also announced the launch of the campaign #LiberenAJassonSalazarwhich “will seek to demonstrate the kidnapping of our friend, demand his immediate release and the guarantee of his most basic human rights.”
«This is an SOS for Jasson and all the political prisoners in Nicaragua. As MU19A, we will continue to fight for freedom, justice and democracy in our country, and we will not allow the voice of youth to be silenced,” the organization stressed.
