UN Geneva - Multimedia Newsroom : Nicaragua

Nicaragua’s ‘systemic’ repression in human right spotlight in Geneva

Investigators tasked by the UN Human Rights Council to track alleged grave abuses of power by top Nicaraguan officials on Wednesday insisted that the International Court of Justice should prosecute what they called the systematic and systemic repression of the country’s people.

The Group of Experts on Nicaragua - who act in an independent capacity and are not UN staff - have previously reported that the Government’s violations appear to constitute crimes against humanity of murder, imprisonment and torture - including rape.

Their latest report will be presented later this week to the Council, where UN human rights chief Volker Türk on Wednesday addressed ongoing violations across the Occupied Palestinian Territories as part of its scheduled session of work.

In its latest report, the Group of Experts on Nicaragua maintain that President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo, have created “an authoritarian State where no independent institutions remain, opposition voices are silenced and the population…faces persecution, forced exile, and economic retaliation”.

Stifling dissent

It was in response to grave concerns about the severe repression of civil rights in Nicaragua that the international community decided in 2018 to establish an investigative body to report back to the Human Rights Council.

“We call on States to hold Nicaragua accountable for its violations of the UN Convention on Torture for the UN Convention on Statelessness before the International Court of Justice…the international community cannot just bear witness. It needs to take concrete measures,” said Reed Brody, member of the Group of Experts on Nicaragua.

“No country in the world has used the arbitrary detention of nationality against political opponents at the same scale that Nicaragua has done; and this is a violation of its obligations under international law under the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness,” Mr. Brody continued.

‘Machine of repression’

According to the panel’s chair, Jan-Michael Simon, State machinery and the ruling Sandinista party “have virtually fused into a unified machine of repression with domestic and transnational impact”.

This development - which has reduced the judicial, legislative and electoral powers “to mere bodies coordinated by the presidency” - has resulted in myriad deaths, “arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, torture, expulsion of nationals, arbitrary deprivation of nationality”, Mr. Simon insisted.

The experts also established that the Nicaraguan army, police and paramilitary groups in 2018 crushed mass public protests that left more than 300 people dead.

Today, arbitrary detention, depriving Nicaraguans of their nationality and forced expulsions are also on the rise, they insisted.

The Government is targeting “anyone perceived as a threat”, their report continues, noting the authorities’ ongoing non-cooperation with their inquiry.

“This is a government at war with its own people,” said panel member Ariela Peralta.

“Nicaragua has become a place of surveillance and enforced silence for those who remain, while those who dare to resist, or are merely suspected of doing so, face a life of statelessness and exile,” said Mr. Brody.

ends

Nicaragua - Human Rights Council

Similar Stories