The Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (Cenidh), based in Managua, denounced this Friday the “arbitrary arrests” of at least 10 opponents of the government of Daniel Ortega.
The detainees are “close friends” of the Renovating Democratic Union (Unamos), founded by former Vice President Sergio Ramírez and the ex-guerrilla Dora María Téllezwho is in prison, reported Cenidh.
Different Nicaraguan media identified two of the detainees as the wife and daughter of an opponent named Javier Alberto Álvarez Zamora, who denounced political persecution and left the country.
When he was not found, his wife, Jeannine Horvilleur Cuadra, and his daughter, Ana Carolina Horvilleur, both of Nicaraguan and French nationality, were arrested, said the opposition Álvarez Zamora in a complaint that was released by the Nicaraguan Human Rights Collective Never Again, an organization based in Costa Rica.
The arrests take place just two months before the municipal elections in Nicaragua, where 153 local authorities from all over the country will be elected.
The 2021 presidential elections were described as fraudulent by the international community because Ortega arrested the main opposition leaders before the elections.
“A new repressive pattern”
According to the Cenidh, in recent weeks they have documented “a new repressive pattern” by the government of President Ortega that consists of “harassment, persecution, threats and arrests” in which many family members have decided not to report to avoid further reprisals “that lead to to irreparable situations.
“This criminal behavior is unprecedented in history, it has the borders of a kidnapping where the kidnapper seizes innocent victims, takes them as hostages to capture the person they want to kidnap. This exceeds the criminal seriousness of kidnapping for ransom,” Cenidh denounced in a press release.
The government of President Daniel Ortega has not referred to the events, however during the act of the national festivities, related to the 201 years of independence of Central America, the Sandinista president said that they would continue fighting for what he called “peace” in the country.
The Sandinista leader has repeatedly called opponents “terrorists” and has called them “sons of bitches of the imperialists.”
“Shut up and destroy us”
The recent arrests seek to “shut us up and destroy us”, but “they will not succeed”, said the opposition organization Unamos, whose main leaders are in jail, after the arrests.
“In the 27 years of our existence, they have not been able to (…) even with the imprisonment of a large part of our leadership and the death in prison of our vice president Hugo Torres,” said Unamos, formerly called the Sandinista Renovation Movement.
Nicaragua has been experiencing a serious sociopolitical crisis since anti-government protests broke out in 2018. Thousands of opponents have gone into exile and more than 180 people have been detained for political reasons, according to human rights organizations.
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