The judges who are part of the repression scheme led by the Ortega Murillo regime, will have to answer for their actions in court, since their work allows the dictatorship to apply a veneer of false legality to the persecution of the opposition leadership, which remains locked up in Nicaraguan prisons.
“Impunity is not forever. we know who they are [estos jueces]. We know what they are doing, and they will have to answer sooner or later for their actions”, expressed the MEP Soraya Rodríguez, in the program This weekwhich is only broadcast online due to censorship in the country.
This week finished the chain judgments carried out in El Chipote, where 53 political prisoners were sentenced to prison terms of 8 to 13 years, precisely the week in which the Working Group for Latin America was meeting, for which both Rodríguez, as well as his colleagues Jordi Cañas and Javier Aznar, they asked the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, expand the sanctions to include the judges who dictate those sentences.
They do it “knowing that they are unfair. The judges have become an executing arm of the dictatorship, and with these sentences, they violate the human rights of the prisoners. That is why we present a list to sanction judges who sentence political prisoners detained without any guarantees; in inhumane, deplorable conditions, suffering torture -which is what El Chipote has become- because their convictions are what allow them to be kept unjustly in prison”, he detailed.
The requested sanctions are individual, and would prevent them from entering the European Union, in addition to “intercepting all the accounts and financial movements they have in community territory,” said the MEP, emphasizing that the fact of appearing on that list is a wake-up call for these judges to take into account that the impunity with which human rights are violated every dayIt’s not forever.
In his opinion, these officials cannot claim that they were only following orders, because in Nicaragua the rule of law is not respected, nor is there separation of powers. “Due obedience is not an excuse to violate Human Rights. Any judge who does not want to become the last link in Ortega’s repressive apparatus in order to continue maintaining a illegal, illegitimate prison and in deplorable conditions to people who have not committed another crime than opposing a dictatorship, they must oppose it, and if they do not, they must be responsible for their actions”, he sentenced.
isolate the dictatorship
The constant contact with the relatives of the political prisoners has cemented in the European representative the certainty that “El Chipote is a torture center, not a prison, nor a detention center”, mentioning the situation in which some prisoners find themselves. like Dora María Téllez, but also Tamara Dávila, Suyén Barahona and Ana Margarita Vigil, who have been in solitary confinement for more than eleven months.
“Truly terrible news is reaching us of the situation and the physical and mental state in which these people are…and the suffering and uncertainty of their families, who don’t really know how they are doing. Under these conditions, it is impossible to think that whoever passes a conviction for ‘conspiring to attack the integrity of the State’, since the complaints have been built on falsehoods, on legislation that the regime passed precisely to produce these incarcerationsmay be oblivious to the dictatorship, and to the violation of human rights that exist in Nicaragua”, he sentenced.
By targeting the judges, it does not mean that Ortega and Murillo go off the radar. Not even at a time Russian invasion of Ukrainehas strained the European institutions that are trying not only to give an appropriate response to the aggressor Vladimir Putin without dragging their countries into the catastrophe, but also to resolve the humanitarian crisis represented by having to care for more than five million ukrainian refugees.
The recent expulsion from the Organization of American States, and the invasion of their headquarters“is a clear example that Ortega is outside the law, does not respect any norm of international or domestic law, and therefore we must continue advancing and putting pressure about what is already one of the worst dictatorships in Latin America,” he declared.
“Until now, the only signs that Ortega and Murillo are giving… is a continuous flight forward”, an attitude that has also had a response from the international community, to which Rodríguez believes that “there is room for put pressure on the regimewith more individual sanctions”.
The constitution in the Human Rights Council, of a group of experts to monitor and document human rights violations, “is a success of Nicaraguan society. There is no other way to help the people of Nicaragua, but to increase the pressure on the regime, increase its international isolation and continue supporting Nicaraguan society, which resists this regime, even in the worst conditions”, he valued.
Although the international community wants to isolate the regime and be close to civil society, Rodríguez acknowledges that it is difficult to do so in an environment in which the dictatorship persecutes and annuls the NGOs that are inside the country and that they function “as a link to be able to help. Undoubtedly the situation is very complex, but there is no other way to help the people of Nicaragua, who are the ones who have to make the transition from this brutal dictatorship, to a democracy.”
