At least 229 people were victims of torture after being detained in Nicaragua since the protests against the government of Daniel Ortega in 2018, the human rights NGO Colectivo Nicaragua Nadie Más stated this Tuesday.
“229 testimonies from torture survivors have been systematized,” highlights the report from the NGO, which works from exile in Costa Rica.
“More than 40 forms or methods of torture perpetrated in Nicaragua” are identified, such as beatings, asphyxiation, electric shocks, burns, simulation of execution or detachment of nails or teeth, among others. The victims are 46 women and 183 men.
“With the start of the protests in 2018, the practice of arbitrary arrests began with the intention of transmitting a message of terror and control to the population,” the report stated.
The government of Ortega and his wife and vice president, Rosario Murillo, has maintained repression since the 2018 opposition protests, which left more than 300 dead in three months according to the UN and which Managua considers an attempted coup d’état promoted by Washington.
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The Collective highlighted the “systematicity” in the “attacks” on dissidents and opponents with acts considered crimes against humanity, such as murder, forced disappearance, imprisonment, torture, rape or any type of sexual violence.
Since 2018, the NGO has reported more than 2,000 arbitrary arrests, of which almost 40% were “with the participation of parastatal agents who have acted as a third armed force.”
Since February 2023, the government has stripped Nicaraguan nationality from some 450 politicians, businessmen, journalists, intellectuals, human rights activists and religious people exiled or expelled from the country.
“Banishment or exile and statelessness has generated an intensification of civil death,” denounced the NGO.
A broad constitutional reform approved in November discovered that “traitors to the country” lose Nicaraguan nationality, a charge with which the vast majority of those expelled from the country were accused.
