Faced with the indolent silence of the national and regional authorities, and the “fixing” of the murders and invasion of land carried out by settlers in the indigenous communities of Bosawás, in the North Caribbean of Nicaragua, residents of Musawás, from the Sauni As territory, left to its streets to shout “enough of violence and robbery”. They demand that the Government attend to their problems and put an end to the wave of crimes that is taking place in those territories.
Last Monday, the residents of Musawás decided to march through the streets of their communities to denounce, before Nicaragua and the international community, that they continue to be victims of a growing wave of violence, theft of their lands at the hands of settlers, and of helplessness on the part of government entities, which “fix” the invaders.
During the march, the community members carried signs in which they denounced that they are living under “a massacre plan”, for which they ask that all the culprits, settlers or community members, be tried. They demanded the “restoration of peace and free movement” and compliance with Law 445, on the communal property regime of indigenous peoples, which the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega has ignored.
More than 70 murders
The Nicaraguan ecologist in exile and president of the environmental organization Fundación del Río, Amaru Ruiz, told Article 66 that the situation of violence and insecurity that exists in the indigenous territories of Nicaragua, and especially in Bosawás, is worrying and even more so because of the position of indolence and complicit cover-up of the government authorities.
He recalled that between 2015 and so far in 2023, 72 indigenous people have been murdered, at the hands of armed groups of settlers, and in the face of this “terrible escalation of murders”, the Government does nothing.
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“What we see is that there is no political will to address the situation of violence in those territories, and even less to address the processes of territorial sanitation, as established by Law 445,” says Ruiz.
Force them to live with their executioners
For his part, Carlos Guadamuz, lawyer for the Nicaragua Nunca Más Human Rights Collective, recalled that the indigenous communities of Nicaragua, especially the Mayagna ethnic groups, have received protection from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), in addition, measures precautionary and protection orders from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (Court-IDH).
Guadamuz denounced that the Ortega-Murillo regime intends to impose the idea that what is being experienced in the indigenous territories is an ethnic conflict and tries to force the communities to a supposed coexistence with their tormentors, which would imply “impunity, because all the crimes that have been perpetrated against the autochthonous populations would remain without being judged”.
