The Ortega regime prohibited this Friday, July 8, the entry to Nicaragua of an international commission of parliamentarians, social activists and human rights defenders from six Latin American countries, who intended to personally verify the conditions of the more than 180 political prisoners of the Government of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo.
The foreign deputies denounced that the regime militarized the Peñas Blancas border post, between Nicaragua and Costa Rica, and that the Costa Rican immigration authorities warned them that Nicaragua did not guarantee their “physical integrity.”
The delegation is made up of deputies and activists from Argentina, Costa Rica, Mexico, Brazil, the Dominican Republic and Panama. They led a caravan —with Nicaraguan exiles and human rights defenders— that left San José, the Costa Rican capital, towards the Peñas Blancas border in Nicaragua.
In the caravan came representatives of the Nicaraguan groups: Articulation of Social Movements; Reflection Group of Political Prisoners; Free Nicaraguan Unity Congress; April Victims Organization; Relatives of prisoners and political prisoners from El Chipote; Anticapitalist Alternative, Nicaraguan section of the International Socialist League.
In addition to the Renovating Youth of UNAMOS; University Coordinator for Justice and Democracy; Nicaraguan migrants from the PRT Costa Rica; United Political Kidnapped Group; and the Blue and White National Unit (UNAB).
previous requests
The commission sent a request to enter Nicaraguan territory through various means, but the regime has not answered them. At the beginning of last June, a delegation —member of the Argentine coordinator “Memory, Truth and Justice Encounter”— appeared before the Nicaraguan embassy in Argentina, to deliver a note to the Ortega ambassador about the trip to the country; however, they were not received.
“We have made diplomatic efforts at the highest level, embassies and consulates of different countries in the world. There is a process through the Argentine Foreign Ministry, through the embassy in Managua, so far the answers have been evasive,” said Argentine activist Mariano Rosa, political coordinator of the international commission.
He added that “we made a very specific proposal for a road map” of the prisons they want to visit.
? #NOW | International caravan of leftist legislators and activists heading to #Nicaragua to learn about the situation of political prisoners.
? https://t.co/GdfCSUsnxF pic.twitter.com/l0nW8WT8mS
— Confidential Nicaragua (@confidencial_ni) July 8, 2022
This is not the first international commission that the regime has denied entry to Nicaragua. In the middle of last June, the Government of Ortega and Murillo flatly refused to allow entry into the country or cooperate with the Commission of Independent Experts appointed by the Human Rights Council of the United Nations (UN), created to investigate the human rights violations that occurred in Nicaragua between 2018 and 2022.
Luciana Echevarría, a deputy from the province of Córdoba for the Socialist Workers Movement – Left Unity Front, commented that the visit to Costa Rica and the border with Nicaragua —given the refusal to enter—, will serve to document the testimonies of relatives of political prisoners and those Nicaraguans forced into exile, which will be integrated into a report and disseminated internationally.
