«On that day they ruined my life, because today I suffer from trauma to my genitals, they destroyed my prostate, I have to put a probe in every eight days to do a prostate lavage. “My left buttock is dead in the muscle, they put a rod in it, my urethra was lacerated and my left eye was affected,” describes a former political prisoner from the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, who was a victim of torture and sexual abuse in prison.
«Only God has helped me, from that day until now I have not been able to have my sleeping hours peacefully, I always wake up scared believing that I am still locked in that place, that I am hearing screams, that they are giving me an order or they are saying things,” says a woman who was also imprisoned in a prison during the dictatorship through tears.
These two testimonies are part of an extensive report by the Collective of Human Rights Defenders Nicaragua Never Again, which collects raw testimonies of the acts of torture carried out by the Sandinista regime against political prisoners, and the consequences that these humiliations left on the victims.
According to the organization, based in San José, Costa Rica, at least 229 people were victims of torture after being detained in Nicaragua since the protests against the dictatorship of Ortega and Murillo, after the citizen rebellion of 2018.
In the report, which is accompanied by heartbreaking testimonies like these, they highlight the violent and abusive way that the regime uses to subjugate older adults, religious people and minors, “which shows the growing severity, extension of these abuses and the subjugation to a situation of special vulnerability against political prisoners” in Nicaragua.
«From 2019 to date, the Collective has collected 229 testimonies from victims of torture and ill-treatment. Of these, 46 are women and 183 men, which represents an increase of 71 cases since the previous report,” indicated the organization, which also warns that the figure could be higher.
“The forms of torture ranged, according to the testimonies, from cigarette burns, electric shocks, beatings and sexual abuse, simulation of execution or detachment of nails or teeth,” says the Collective, which includes more than 40 forms of torture, from these victims.
“With the start of the protests in 2018, the practice of arbitrary arrests and forced disappearances began with the intention of transmitting a message of terror and control to the population,” the report says.
In its ninth report, the Collective highlights the “systematicity” in the “attacks” on dissidents and opponents with acts considered crimes against humanity. It also includes seven rapes, 113 cases of sexual violence such as inappropriate touching and taking photographs of naked victims with threats of publication, as well as 131 cases of forced nudity.
The report also counts victims who did not manage to survive the torture, such as the case of the opponent Eddy Montes, who died on May 16, 2019. Hugo Torres who was deprived of medical care and died in prison on February 12, 2022.
The prisoners, upon being released, see the physical and psychological effects of torture. “They come out with significant illnesses such as diabetes, hypertension, post-traumatic stress, it is difficult for them to reintegrate into social life and work, permanent physical damage that prevents them from living their lives,” says the agency’s psychologist.
“I am not the same and it has been difficult for me to live thinking about that, I live every day with hatred, I hate a lot and my mind only thinks of revenge,” says a former victim of rape by the regime’s operators.
According to the organization, sexual traumas are more challenging. Ruth Quirós, a specialist at the Collective, states that people are filled with a lot of sadness and shame when faced with these sexual abuses that they sometimes suffer in groups and with the use of physical violence, which leaves permanent consequences.
Likewise, the report documented with names and surnames, positions and detailed facts of 179 intellectual and material perpetrators of torture, mainly police, led by their boss, Francisco Díaz, as well as Sandinista mayors and “parapolice and paramilitaries” that the regime names. “volunteer police.”
