The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) reported that it was notified of a new wave of arbitrary arrests unleashed by the regime of Daniel Ortega against members of the political group Unión Democrática Renovadora (let’s unite), formerly the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS), and against the relatives of the opponents.
“According to information received, political persecution has intensified these days. Once again it is the turn of members of UNAMOS and their relatives, with at least 10 people detained and others besieged in different departments,” the agency published this Saturday, September 17. The OHCHR reiterated its call for the regime to cease the persecution.
The day before, the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (Cenidh) launched an urgent alert about kidnappings against opposition leaders and their families. He indicated that it is a “new repressive pattern” against Sandinista dissidents that, at the moment, adds up to at least ten arrests.
He denounced that “at the national level a strategy of harassment, persecution, threats and even arbitrary arrests has been unleashed.”
The new repressive pattern consists of taking hostage the relatives of the opponents whom it is criminalizing in order to capture them, “massifying victimization and violating their right to individual freedom, personal, physical and psychological integrity, the right to the presumption of innocence, among others,” he explained.
Among the victims is the opponent Javier Alberto Alvarez Zamorawho from exile denounced that the regime detained his daughter Ana Carolina Álvarez, his son-in-law, Félix Roiz, and his wife, Jeannine Horvilleur Cuadra63, after the police tried to capture him on the night of September 13.
“This criminal behavior is unprecedented in history, it is not characteristic of any dictatorship. It has the borders of a kidnapping where the kidnapper seizes innocent victims, takes them as hostages to capture the person he wants to kidnap. What exceeds the criminal gravity of kidnapping for ransom, which, according to the Penal Code, is when a ransom or any monetary benefit is demanded, “said the human rights organization.
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“In this case, the regime is demanding the life, integrity and security of innocent human beings,” he added.
In contrast to the arbitrary arrests carried out at the gates of the illegitimate presidential elections of 2021, this new attack intends to “annihilate them politically and physically” because the regime has already guaranteed its total control of the municipal governments and knows that nothing prevents it from that objective. , warned the Cenidh.
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He asked Civil Society and Human Rights organizations that monitor the crisis in Nicaragua from abroad to assess and prioritize this situation on their agenda, as well as promote urgent actions. In particular, the international mechanisms for the protection of human rights: the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), the Special Follow-up Mechanism for Nicaragua (MESENI) and the OHCHR.
The Democratic Renovating Union (Unamos), formerly the Sandinista Renovating Movement (MRS), has been in existence for 27 years. Since the second half of 2021, its main leaders have been imprisoned in the Judicial Assistance Directorate (DAJ) in Managua, known as “El Nuevo Chipote”.
The justice of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo keeps several territorial leaders of UNAMOS behind bars, including the leaders Suyen Barahona, Ana Margarita Vijil, Tamara Davila and the former guerrilla commander Dora Maria Tellez; and the former Sandinista guerrilla was under house arrest Victor Hugo Tinoco all charged and convicted of alleged “treason against the fatherland.”
The organization also suffered the loss of retired general and political prisoner Hugo Torreswho died in police custody, a fact they describe as a crime.
