The arbitrary deprivation of 317 nationalities, consummated by the Daniel Ortega regime between February 9 and 15, 2023, is unprecedented in Latin America. It is even greater than the process carried out at the time by the dictator Augusto Pinochet, who ruled Chile with an iron fist between 1973 and 1990.
This was explained by the lawyer Tamara Taraciuk, acting director of the Division for the Americas of Humans Rights Watch (HRW), who said this Sunday, February 26, to the television program This week that, in the case of Chile, “there were nine cases, very few compared to the 317 in Nicaragua.”
On February 9, 2023, while the regime exiled and denationalized 222 political prisoners, another stage of repression began. It took away the nationality of Monsignor Rolando Álvarez, bishop of the Diocese of Matagalpa, and finally, on February 15, it punished 94 more people, including writers, religious, journalists, businessmen, and social leaders, accused of “traitors to the homeland.”
The decision impacted his daily life. “It is not only the passport and nationality, but what about the birth certificates, the marriage certificates? All that architecture is going to take a bit of time to put it back together, ”Taraciuk lamented in his intervention.
The human rights expert referred to the new abuse of the regime that includes the confiscation of assets and the theft of pensions from “stateless retirees”, carried out by the state-run Nicaraguan Social Security Institute (INSS).
Those “denationalized” by Pinochet
In a dialogue on the television program This weekTaraciuk participated with the former Guatemalan prosecutor Claudia Paz y Paz and the Chilean lawyer Edgardo Riveros, who agreed to point out the violations of national and international norms of the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship.
Photo: Confidential | EFE photomontage.
Paz y Paz, a member of the GIEI for Nicaragua, is director of the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL). Riveros is an expert in international law, a former congressman, who served as former Undersecretary General of Government in the presidency of Patricio Aylwin, the first democratic administration after Pinochet’s departure from power.
Riveros recalled that the most emblematic “denationalized” Chilean was Orlando Letelier, former chancellor of the government of Salvador Allende, who was punished with this arbitrary measure, days before his assassination on September 21, 1976 in Washington DC, United States, in an attack terrorist perpetrated by agents of the DINA of Chile.
Faced with cases such as those reported in Nicaragua and Chile, Taraciuk affirmed that “justice takes time, but it arrives,” while Riveros told those responsible for the repression in Nicaragua that they will not go unpunished.
“Those who are in charge of power today in Nicaragua should know that impunity is not eternal and we must answer for the atrocities that are committed,” the lawyer maintained.
Riveros recognized that “transitional justice” is always a complex issue, due to the difficulty involved in rebuilding justice courts that are in a position to deal with human rights violations committed during dictatorial periods.
This change in the courts occurred, according to his testimony, gradually, but Riveros explains that there are notable cases in Chile, such as that of the head of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), General Manuel Contreras—indicted for serious abuses—, who died incarcerated in 2015.
The statements of this group of three experts were known at the gates of 52° regular session of the UN Human Rights Council, which will take place between February 27 and April 4, 2023.
The issue of Nicaragua will be part of the agenda when the report of the Group of Independent Experts is presented on March 6, which for a year has investigated the responsibility for the crimes and human rights violations perpetrated in Nicaragua.
“At the United Nations level, the Human Rights Council has to act. We hope that, in the experts’ report, this is an element incorporated with all the force that corresponds”, Riveros affirmed.
HRW calls for an international response
For Taraciuk, the key in the serious situation in Nicaragua is to achieve a regional response in which political and legal actions complement each other, despite the ideological differences that may exist between the different rulers of Latin America.
“The will of the other governments will be put to the test. What is going to happen in this period of sessions is that a resolution may be presented to renew the mandate of the experts (independent for Nicaragua). We hope it will be for two years,” said the HRW official.
The specialist refers to the Group of Experts formed by the UN under resolution 49/3 of March 31, 2022, in which they were ordered to undertake exhaustive and independent investigations into the alleged abuses against citizens carried out by the regime since 2018.
The president of the UN Group of Experts is the German Jan-Michael Simon, and it is also made up of the Colombian Ángela María Buitrago and the Chilean Alexandro Álvarez, according to information from the same international organization..
“We have to find a way to make (the countries of the region) susceptible to concerted pressure. It is important that there is a consensus, including governments of different ideologies, that today can talk about Nicaragua,” proposed Taraciuk.
The massive dispossession of nationalities has so far mobilized the international community. The governments of Spain, Argentina, Ecuador, Chile, Colombia and Mexico have offered their nationalities to the politically persecuted of Ortega. It is an expression of solidarity. Paz y Paz encouraged Costa Rica to do the same with its neighbors.
Besides, 17 member countries of the Organization of American States (OAS) They celebrated the release of the 222 political prisoners on February 23 and also deplored the dispossession of nationalities.
“We oppose the arbitrary cancellation of the nationality of 94 Nicaraguans on February 15, 2023, as well as the illegal seizure of their assets, and the use of these measures as a method of punishment and oppression,” they stressed.
Although the group of signatory countries includes the United States, Costa Rica, Canada, Argentina, Guatemala, Chile, among others, who have accompanied Nicaraguans demanding a return to democracy, the silence of other nations is striking.
For example, Mexico did not sign the pronouncement, although President Andrés Manuel López Obrador offered nationality to those affected. Neither did the Central American neighbors of Panama, Honduras and El Salvador say anything.
The persecution of universal crimes
The three lawyers analyzed how to prosecute these crimes in a country like Nicaragua where there is no rule of law.
The Guatemalan jurist is the first to see an opportunity in the face of the global reaction to the deprivation of nationalities. “Now that we have this international solidarity, to grant nationalities, it is also a way for processes to be initiated to punish the people responsible for these serious atrocities in this case,” she added.
Paz was one of the members of the Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) that investigated the violent events that occurred in Nicaragua between April 18 and May 30, 2018. They published a report in which they denounced the commission of crimes against humanity that could be prosecuted if other countries in the region opened their jurisdictions to carry out the respective investigations.
The possibility of the intervention of the International Criminal Court was raised this week by the Colombian government, headed by the leftist Gustavo Petro, who rejected with “revulsion” the “denationalization” against the citizens of Nicaragua.
“Colombia, which in recent decades has fought tirelessly to achieve peace, much more so now that it intends to be a world power of life, rejects the dictatorial procedures of those who bring to mind the worst moments of the Anastasio Somoza dictatorship. that Sandinismo managed to overcome”, affirmed the Colombian Foreign Ministry.
Taraciuk explained that the ICC has a mandate applied to the Rome Statute, which has not been ratified by Nicaragua, and in this situation urged the international community to exert greater pressure against Ortega, who showed that “he does not have the greatest intention of giving in ”.
The Nicaraguan dictatorship violated the civil rights of Nicaraguans since September 2018. In Nicaragua there are still 35 political prisoners and there are no opposition demonstrations due to the prohibition of the Police, whose control goes as far as preventing religious processions.
The dictatorship’s espionage services also targeted religious men known for their pastoral work, such as Monsignor Rolando Álvarez, Bishop of Matagalpa. The Catholic hierarch is in a security cell in the Tipitapa prison, after a court sentenced him to 26 years and four months in prison in retaliation for rejecting exile as an option.
For many years, another target of the dictatorship was Monsignor Silvio Báez, auxiliary bishop of Managua, exiled since 2019 due to threats from Sandinista fanatics, and who was also stripped of his nationality on February 15, 2023 in the group of 94 citizens. In the height of illegalities, Claudia Paz y Paz pointed out, in this case they were sanctioned without a sentence, which becomes “the most stark proof of the regime’s authoritarianism.”
