During 19 months in jail, the prisoners of conscience held captive in the Judicial Assistance Directorate (DAJ), El Chipote, have only received 13 visits from their relatives; the most recent was held this weekend of December 24 and 25, on the occasion of the Christmas holidays.
The political prisoners managed to see, once again, their minor children, this 17 days after the Ortega regime authorized the first special visit for December 7 and 8 in the context of the celebration of “La Purísima y la Gritería” , according to a police statement.
In the same document, the institution announced that similar visits would be made at Christmas and the end of the year. These three special meetings are the first that the regime has authorized since it imprisoned some thirty social, political, student leaders and presidential candidates, at the end of May 2021, as part of a repressive escalation in the framework of the electoral farce, in which Ortega and his wife and vice president, Rosario Murillo, guaranteed to remain in power.
They also occurred after multiple campaigns demanding respect for the human rights of political prisoners and the submission of a hunger strike by the sports writer, Miguel Mendoza; the lawyer Róger Reyes; the presidential candidate, Miguel Mora, and the political leader, Tamara Dávila, to demand to see her children. Likewise, political prisoners Irving Larios and Dora María Téllez were deprived of food to demand an end to the torture system.
The relatives, who have also been victims of torture imposed by the Ortega regime, according to human rights defenders, have demanded a “Christmas without political prisoners”. However, Ortega has omitted any request for his release.
Rather, the harassment and persecution against dissident voices, relatives of prisoners of conscience, journalists, territorial and religious leaders, and their own supporters intensified, bringing the list of prisoners of conscience to more than 235 at the end of 2022.
Cruelty to political prisoners in El Chipote
Despite the fact that the political prisoners located in the different prison systems of the country are victims of violations of their human rights, the Ortega regime maintains a special cruelty with the prisoners of conscience in El Chipote, who are isolated, incommunicado, without access to a patio sun, with the light on in the cells all day, or in complete darkness and no access to reading material.
But these abuses were ignored by Ortega, when he recalled his experience as a prisoner of the Somoza dictatorship (1967 and 1974), during a tribute to the victims of the 1972 earthquake, 50 years ago, this December 23. Ortega spoke of the isolation conditions and the prohibition to communicate between the inmates themselves.
These are also applied by their own authoritarian regime, accused of inflicting torture on political prisoners, evidenced by the extreme thinness of their bodies, the pallor and worsening of their chronic conditions, and the appearance of new diseases during captivity.
