The United Nations Organization (UN) urged the international community to pronounce on human rights violations by the government of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, in his attempt to further consolidate power, according to a report published on Wednesday.
Ortega, a former left -wing who initially came to power in 1979 and returned in 2007, has been extending its control by allowing its presidency to “coordinate” judicial and legislative duties, in addition to expanding state control over the media.
The UN report accuses Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo, who serves as co -president, having “transformed the country into an authoritarian state where there are no independent institutions.”
UN experts urged to take legal measures against Nicaragua, highlighting patterns of human rights abuse linked to political persecution in the Latin American country, which they say follow patterns that have been previously established as crimes against humanity.
In the past, the Ortega government has ignored UN reports and the Organization of American States (OAS), ensuring that they are part of an international campaign against them.
Nicaragua lived in 2018 mass protests against the governmentwhen Ortega’s repression against dissidents resulted in the death of more than 350 people and unleashed international outrage for human rights abuses.
The UN document also involved the Nicaraguan army in the violent repression, contradicting previous denials.
Political reform
A constitutional reform of broad scope to increase the presidential powers on other branches of the government, presented in November by Ortega, 79, and in force since the beginning of February, has “eliminated the little that remained of the institutional controls and counterweights,” said the United Nations report.
The reform, approved by the legislators of the Sandinista Front of Ortega, who controls the Congress, allows each co -president to name an unlimited number of vice presidents, which has generated speculation that one or more of the eight children of Ortega and Murillo living in Nicaragua could eventually be elected.
The reforms have been defended by government allies as a deepening to a revolution of almost 50 years, which began in 1979 when Ortega and other leftist guerrillas overthrew a family right -wing dynasty, which for a long time acted as an important antagonist of the United States Cold War era.
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