“I am not exaggerating when I say that many of the political prisoners are facing a life or death situation,” activist Bianca Jagger said Friday at the Organization of American States (OAS), where 27 countries called for the release of detainees.
“I accuse dictator Daniel Ortega and his accomplice Rosario Murillo for the inhumane conditions in which political prisoners find themselves. Their lives are in serious danger,” added the human rights defender, referring to the vice president and wife of the Nicaraguan president.
It did so during an extraordinary session of the Permanent Council, the executive body of the OAS, in which 27 states reiterated “that all political prisoners in Nicaragua must be released immediately,” days after the death in prison of Hugo Torres, one of the opponents of Ortega.
In Nicaragua “political, civil and human rights are ignored, eroded or violated,” states the text supported by Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, United States, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Dominican Republic, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay and Venezuela (represented by a delegate of opposition leader Juan Guaidó after the departure of the bloc from the government of Nicolás Maduro in 2019).
In addition to Nicaragua, Mexico, Honduras, Dominica, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Lucia and Cuba, which is a member of the organization but does not participate in it, abstained from supporting it.
Torres, a former guerrilla who was Ortega’s comrade-in-arms against the Anastasio Somoza dictatorship in the 1970s, was one of the 46 opponents detained in Nicaragua, including seven who aspired to the presidency in the last elections.
At least 18 have already been found guilty and seven have been sentenced to between eight and 13 years in prison. To this group are added another 124 opponents detained during the 2018 anti-government protests.
– “Not a drawing” –
Among the detained presidential candidates is Félix Maradiaga, the husband of Berta Valle, who also spoke before the OAS.
“Today my husband turns 255 days since he was arbitrarily detained,” she said, her voice cracking with emotion. “He has been missing and incommunicado for long periods” and “I have not been allowed any kind of contact with him, not a phone call, not a letter, not even a drawing of our 8-year-old daughter.”
The rapporteur for persons deprived of liberty at the International Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) Edgar Stuardo Ralón gave chilling reports about what happens in prisons, especially in El Chipote.
There are detainees in deplorable conditions such as “cruel, inhuman treatment, unsanitary cells, restrictions on receiving visits, lack of access to water and food,” he listed.
The IACHR is aware, he denounced, that in recent weeks these conditions “have seriously deteriorated” in terms of health, especially of the elderly and women.
Since February 1, “hearings have been held practically in secret” in El Chipote “and the accused have been brought to trial without prior notice and without having contact with their defense counsel, to later be sentenced to disproportionate penalties.”
– Sandino “would be imprisoned”-
A deterioration in which the Secretary General of the OAS, Luis Almagro, influenced, “particularly with regard to respect for due process and judicial guarantees, institutional issues, such as the separation of the powers of the State and human rights issues “.
“If there is no compassion for those who have been a comrade in struggle, work and revolution, democracy can no longer be expected with respect for human rights,” he said, insisting that “there is no place at the Permanent Council table to a dictatorship”.
The Nicaraguan ambassador to the OAS, Arturo Mcfields, stressed that “sovereignty and validation do not come from this dying and shameful organization,” which Nicaragua asked to leave last November. “We are the sovereign homeland of Augusto César Sandino (a revolutionary) and (general) Benjamín Zeledón.”
If Sandino were alive, “he would be in prison,” replied Almagro, who lamented that Managua opted “for refusal or silence” to the efforts of the OAS in search of a dialogue.
