Nicaraguans exiled in Costa Rica held a vigil this Tuesday, April 19, for the four years of the anti-government protests that were violently repressed left more than 350 dead who to date remain unpunished, according to human rights organizations.
With candles, banners and poems, the protesters remembered the victims and lamented that in Nicaragua even the possibility of commemorating them was prohibited since those who tried to do so were threatened with jail.
Susana López, mother of the young Gerald Vásquez, murdered in 2018, told the VOA that there were reports of police siege in the homes of other relatives of victims who were even prohibited from going to the cemetery.
“We mothers are going to surrender and we will not shut up until we have justice. The government must answer for crimes against humanity,” Vásquez told the voice of america at the end of the vigil.
Human rights activist Gonzalo Carrión, who also attended the event, said that the “state of terror” with which the 2018 anti-government protests were stopped is still in force to prevent any other social outburst.
“The state of terror that was applied to stop the demonstration is still in force. That should not be forgotten but should be a reference for the generation now and in the future,” said the also member of the Nicaragua Never Again Collective.
The vigil was held in the Plaza de la Democracia y Abolición del Ejército in the Costa Rican capital, San José.
The United States government, for its part, commemorated “the violent repression of the regime” of Ortega-Murillo through a tweet hung by Ambassador Brian A. Nichols, Under Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs at the US Department of State.
International human rights organizations also spoke about it in a demand for justice for the serious human rights violations that have been occurring in Nicaragua, since April 18, 2018, by the Government of Daniel Ortega, although they regretted that “remain in complete impunity” and “they continue to deepen,” according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).
The Ortega government, for its part, has not commented on the matter, but neither has it opened any type of credible process to guarantee justice to the victims of state repression and, contrary to this, has intensified the persecution against critics.
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