The Police at the service of the Daniel Ortega regime seized the facilities of the Permanent Commission on Human Rights, an organization that was stripped of its legal personality in April 2022.
The news of the seizure of the building by the police agents was confirmed by telephone to Article 66 by the lawyer Denis Darce, deputy executive secretary of CPDH.
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Through a statement, the organization, based in Miami, United States, —due to Ortega’s wave of repression— condemned the action of the Nicaraguan dictatorship. “We have learned that in the hours of this Thursday, January 19, four riot patrols came to seize our building,” they denounced.
“They have not managed to silence our voice”
Despite the consummation of the robbery of the CPDH offices, the directors affirmed that “these repressive acts, neither the threats nor the imprisonment against our official, Dr. María Oviedo, have silenced and will not silence our voice and our fight to defend the human rights of the Nicaraguans.
They also promised to “continue firm in the national and international demand for truth, justice, reparation and non-repetition in favor of the victims and their families.”
“From forced exile, we continue to accompany our long-suffering people on the hard path towards the deconstruction and democratization of our beloved Nicaragua,” they stressed.
For his part, the lawyer and administrative secretary of CPDH, Marcos Carmona Carmona, He stated that this action would happen “sooner or later.” “Since they took away our legal status, we were clear that the building was going to be confiscated,” he said.
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He asserted that this new action by Ortega is not strange, “because it has been a practice and custom of the dictatorship to steal and violate the rights of Nicaraguans (…) However, this makes us stronger because from exile we continue to be committed to our people to continue denouncing the abuses of the dictatorship, because there is no evil that lasts 100 years and no body can resist it”.
On April 20 of last year, the steamroller of Sandinista deputies in the National Assembly canceled with 74 votes in favor, zero against, 15 abstentions and one present, the legal personality of the human rights defense organization, which included 24 other NGO.
Before the outlawing of the CDH, its officials reported that an attempt was made to present the act of compliance, a document with which they could register as foreign agents, a regulation that obliges all non-profit associations to render accounts to the State of all donations and income they receive.
With the closure of the CPDH, there is no legalized organization in defense of human rights in Nicaragua. Since 2018, this NGO has suffered siege and harassment of its directors and lawyers. For more than 18 months, the Ortega justice system has held the lawyer María Oviedo captive in “El Nuevo Chipote”, whom it convicted for the alleged crime of “undermining national integrity”.
