A group of UN experts denounced this Wednesday that the campaign of disappearances and arbitrary arrests of opponents that began in Nicaragua after the 2018 protests continues today, with at least 427 arrests since 2021.
In a letter addressed to the Nicaraguan authorities, these experts urged “to release the people detained for their criticism (…) and to immediately inform their families and lawyers about their fate and whereabouts.”
Since the massive opposition protests in 2018, which left more than 300 dead in three months according to the UN, the government of Daniel Ortega and his wife and vice president, Rosario Murillo, have toughened the repression against dissidents, NGOs and the Church.
UN experts assure that there is a “clear and deliberate pattern” maintained to this day “to eliminate and silence dissident voices through the use of forced disappearances, torture, sexual violence, arbitrary detentions and inhumane conditions.”
At least 427 people have been arrested since 2021, says this group, who denounces that the conditions of those detained “are deteriorating further, which has a profound impact on their physical and psychological health.”
Among the abuses they include are the denial of “the most basic legal safeguards, such as access to a lawyer, a doctor or medication, and family visits” or the keeping of some dissidents in prison once they have completed their sentences.
They also point out that family members often do not know the whereabouts or situation of the detainees and receive contradictory information about the prison where they are held or even deny that they have been arrested.
Especially serious are the detention conditions in La Modelo prison, they say, “where prisoners have no contact with the outside world and are subjected to torture and ill-treatment.”
Related news: UN experts denounce “broad violations” of human rights in Nicaraguan universities
On Tuesday, the human rights NGO Colectivo Nicaragua Nadie Más published a report in which it collected testimonies from 229 survivors of torture in this country, with methods such as beatings, asphyxiation, electric shocks or loosening of nails or teeth.
Nicaraguan authorities consider that the 2018 opposition protests were an attempted coup d’état promoted by the United States.
