Former guerrilla Dora María Téllez took advantage of her intervention during a special session commemorating World Human Rights Day, at the Organization of American States (OAS), to denounce the arrests and kidnapping of opponents in the authoritarian regimes of Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela.
Téllez denounced the recent capture of Julio Antonio Quintana Carvajal, 66, in León, and 30 other people arrested in the last two weeks in Nicaragua by orders of the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship. He also assured that these opponents are subjected to torture similar to those experienced under the Somoza dictatorship in the 70s.
Ortega’s expressed policy also mentioned opponents such as Marvin Vargas and Brooklyn Rivera, from Nicaragua, and the cases of Rocío San Miguel, kidnapped in Venezuela by the dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro; Yunaikis Linares Rodríguez and Sissi Abascal, detained and in isolation under the Castro regime, in Cuba.
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«The political prison that thousands of people on the American continent suffer today, solitary confinement, physical, psychological, emotional and food torture, sexual abuse, extortion, harassment and siege of families, are open wounds. It is the price that authoritarian regimes charge for social rejection of the liquidation of freedoms and rights,” said Téllez.
The former Sandinista guerrilla affirmed that there must be zero tolerance for the actions of these regimes in Latin America, in addition to maintaining pressure against these governments to achieve the release of more than 3,167 political prisoners on the continent.
«It is necessary to develop zero tolerance towards political imprisonment and the governments or regimes that impose it. Zero tolerance for those who kidnap, prosecute and condemn people for what they think or want. Zero tolerance for torture, for those who practice and execute it,” Téllez mentioned.
In his speech, Téllez stressed that despite the denial, authoritarian governments do care about “the monitoring and surveillance of human rights organizations, the excellent performance of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the international sanction and the constant reminder of what they do.
Téllez closed his speech by asking international organizations to continue raising their voices against these dictatorships. «We have to ensure that all people prisoners of conscience are released, not simply released or banished; “that all prisons for political prisoners be closed, that political freedoms and rights are fully exercised by every citizen of this continent.”
Additionally, during the presentation, he thanked the governments of the United States, Guatemala and Spain for advocating for the release of the prisoners and offering nationality to the more than 300 exiled and denationalized people. He also mentioned the work of the Secretary of the Organization of American States, Luis Almagro, and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
