The organization Madres de Abril (AMA) commemorated this May 30, Mother’s Day in Nicaragua, four years after the murder of their children by the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo.
The group of mothers and relatives of victims of the repression appeared, together with the human rights defenders of the Nicaragua Never Again Collective, to remember the massacre unleashed by the Police and paramilitary groups, on May 30, 2018, when the government of Daniel Ortega attacked with bullets a large mobilization that left the Jean Paul Genie roundabout to the Central American University sector, which was led by mothers who had already lost their children between April 19 and the end of May of that year.
“We thank those who accompanied us on May 30 and continued to accompany us in denouncing the crimes committed by the dictatorship and in our search for Truth and Justice. Today many are imprisoned and under torture,” AMA denounced in a statement that was read and broadcast virtually.
national mourning day
In its statement, the organization of relatives of victims also insisted on its declaration of May 30 as “Day of National Mourning”, despite the fact that Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo have tried to distort reality and have decreed the date, which in Nicaragua is It is celebrated as “Mother’s Day”, on a national holiday, which was materialized with a legislative reform to article 66 of the Labor Code that added this event to the calendar of 10 holidays in the country.
“For us mothers and family members, it is a day of deep pain, but also of great indignation for the irreparable damage that the dictatorship has caused us since April 2018, with its bloody repression that escalated even more after the May 30 Massacre” AMA recalled.
Related news: The Mothers of April do not give up, four years demanding justice
“Today, with the strength that pain and indignation give us, we repeat with one voice and so that the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship listens: NEITHER FORGIVENESS, NOR FORGETTING, NOR SILENCE,” reiterated the Mothers of April, whose demand has been ignored. by the State, although it has been documented by international human rights organizations, such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
The IACHR, through the so-called Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) and the Follow-up Mechanism for Nicaragua (MESENI), even determined that in Nicaragua, the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo committed crimes against humanity that could be tried in international courts at any time in the future, because those crimes do not prescribe.
“Even with all the terror sown since they riddled our children and raged against their dying bodies and later desecrating their graves, THEY HAVE NOT SILENCED US OR WILL SILENCE US. Nor will they be able to bury our will to Resistance and our thirst for Justice, because it is founded on the voices, on the blood of our children and our cruelly murdered relatives,” AMA said.
They applaud the appointment of experts to investigate crimes
AMA was also satisfied with the appointment of three experts by the Human Rights Council of the United Nations (UN), whose mission is to investigate and document the murders of their children.
“We celebrate as a step forward the appointment of the three international experts that make up the Mechanism approved by the Human Rights Council
Human Rights with the mandate to investigate the violations of human rights in Nicaragua since 2018. We consider that it comes to support the Route of Truth and Justice that we have traced, “he concludes.
In its statement, AMA concludes by urging Nicaraguans to “redouble their active resistance to get out of the dictatorship” and “tear down the wall of absolute impunity” that the Ortega regime has imposed so that the murder of the more than 350 Nicaraguans, certified by the IACHR, be forgotten; and “support the SOS launched by the mothers and relatives of political prisoners” who have been locked up for almost a year in El Chipote prison, to “end torture.”
