Since she was a child, Vilma Núñez has known the prisons of Nicaragua. She was eight years old when they took her to see a political prisoner: her father, detained by the Somoza Guard. The same woman who years later also imprisoned and tortured her.
After a work of more than six decades that make her a veteran defender of the human rights of Nicaraguans, the founder and current president of the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (Cenidh), confesses that she decided to study law to fight against the abuses she experienced. since his childhood. In her 63-year career as a lawyer, she recalls that she rarely practiced as an accuser, most of the time she was a defender.
From the Cenidh, Núñez continues to exert in his fight for the liberation of the political prisoners of the Daniel Ortega regime, as he also did in 1958, when he was part of the León student movement that was part of the Committee for the Freedom of the Political Prisoners of the Somoza regime. On that occasion, he recalls that they requested an audience with the dictator Luis Somoza Debayle and together with the rector Mariano Fiallos Gil they met with one of the heirs of the dynasty, who was enraged when they demanded the release of the prisoners.
Twenty-one years after that encounter, Núñez was imprisoned and tortured with electric shocks by order of the last heir to the dynasty, Anastasio Somoza Debayle. For this reason, the current situation of political prisoners reminds him of the days of that other terrible dictatorship that did not tolerate criticism.
Núñez is also a survivor of the student massacre of July 23, 1959. She knows, firsthand, what it means to be imprisoned for false crimes, just for protesting. And at 83, he has had to live again the attacks of a new dictatorship.
At the end of 2018, the Daniel Ortega regime ordered cancel legal status del Cenidh, which he founded in 1990.
“They have beaten us, but it does not hurt us,” declared the president of Cenidh defiantly. “A serious human rights organism does not dissolve it, nor our commitment and support to the Nicaraguan people, a resolution of bodies without autonomy and independence,” he said about the decision of the National Assembly.
The work of Vilma Núñez, internationally recognized
For her work as a human rights defender, Vilma Núñez has gained national and international recognition. On November 24, the Pro Human Rights Association of Spain awarded him the APDHE 2021 Human Rights Award in the international category.
In 2019, the Schwelle Foundation awarded her the Bremen International Peace Prize in the category “Ambassador for Peace in Public Life”. In addition, in 2011, it was recognized with the “Legion of Honor” by the Government of France.
On March 8, 2017, through a letter, nine Sandinista regime officials protested against the United States embassy for recognizing the trajectory of the president of Cenidh, who was nominated for the “Women of Courage” award.
For Núñez, all the attacks are because they do not forgive him for having accompanied the accusation of rape that Zoilamérica Narváez filed against Ortega in 1998.
President of Cenidh does not rule out jail
What Dr. Núñez misses the most is not being able to accompany the victims to the place where the violations of their human rights occur. Not being able to even file an appeal because the entire state apparatus is controlled by the Ortega regime.
“Nobody listens, or does anything, which generates a situation of helplessness. You cannot protest, or do anything, that is why I have said that I feel imprisoned in Nicaragua, ”she explains.
However, he affirms that he will not cease in his fight for the defense of human rights and for the search for justice. “Fear has been one of the most powerful weapons used by the dictatorship and I am not going to let it dominate me,” he insists.
The human rights defender does not rule out that they want to imprison her, but says that every day she overcomes that fear. “The authentic defense of human rights does not end with the use of the Law. Although national and international norms always work, they are accompanied by non-formal mechanisms and one of the most effective is public denunciation,” he points out.
“I will continue in Nicaragua, my commitment is to continue with the people denouncing and defending human rights until I can, because I have always had to be on the sidewalk in front of tyrants and human rights violators,” says Núñez.
The example of Dona Vilma
“Since I met her, her strength has impacted me (…) if there is one person who has always been present in the complaints of human rights violations in Nicaragua, it is her, who is an example of her strength and courage.”
Antonia urrejola
President of the IACHR
“The history of the human rights movement in the last 60 years, in Nicaragua, has a people suffering and resisting in the face of two dynastic dictatorships. Whoever writes it must inevitably count on the activism and commitment of Vilma Núñez ”.
Gonzalo carrion
Nicaragua Human Rights Collective Never +
“Who has not seen Dona Vilma, traveling to the most remote places, to accompany victims of violations of their rights? Nobody, like you, has known how to stand by the Nicaraguan people. “
Gioconda belli
Nicaraguan writer
