UN Geneva - Multimedia Newsroom : HRC – Press conference: Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua

[Other language spoken]

Good morning and welcome to this this press conference at the Pale de Nacion in Geneva.

We're pleased to have with us today at the Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua who are here to share with you the findings of their latest report.

As you may know, the Human Rights Council established the Group of Human Rights Experts in Nicaragua in March of 2022 to investigate all alleged human rights violations and abuses committed in Nicaragua since April of 2018.

The group released their latest report this morning along with a press release and are scheduled to present the findings of their latest report to the Council on Friday.

Here with us now are the Chair, Jan Michael Simon in the middle and to my right of fellow expert Reed Brody, who joined the Group of Experts in September.

And on the FAR on my far right is Ariela Peralta De Stefano.

So today we'll start off with with Mr Simon, the chair who will read an opening statement and then we'll open the floor to questions.

Please note that this press conference will be held exclusively in English.

If you have a questions in Spanish, please contact us afterwards and we'll arrange for you to speak with the experts.

Now I pass the floor to the chair who will start with opening remarks followed by the his fellow experts and then we will open the floor to questions.

[Other language spoken]

Thank you, Todd.

[Other language spoken]

We would like to thank the media for the interest in Nicaragua and in our work.

This is the fifth time we are briefing the press about the results of our work in the last three years.

These results are today based on a total of more than 1500 interviews and 7007 thousand documents.

Based on these investigations, we can today conclude that the state of Nicaragua and the ruling Sandinista Party have virtually fused into a unified machine of repression.

This machine is responsible for myriad of cases of deaths, arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, torture, expulsion of nationals, arbitrary deprivation of nationality, etcetera, etcetera.

And this machine impacts human rights domestically and transnationally.

In our third report that we will present this Friday to the Council, we take a closer look at the details of the machine responsible for the widespread and systematic violations in and outside Nicaragua.

The repressive regime in the hands of the Nicaraguan government operates with two large sets of **** wheels.

1 is a wide intelligence apparatus.

The Intel apparatus gathers information, surveils the population and selects targets for the violations of rights.

In short, these apparatus acts as the eyes and ears of the government that allows to obtain and maintain total control over the population.

The second set of cockwheels consists of a network of state and para state entities that would then proceed in violating the rights of the targets selected by the Intel apparatus.

The command of this machinery is designed and managed to operate like tentacles.

That is to say that the chain of command structure is designed to guarantee top down direct control of several links at all operational levels that put in practise these violations.

Ladies and gentlemen, I don't think any further explanation is needed to establish that the human rights violations of this machinery in the hands of the Nicaraguan regime are not only widespread and systematic.

More than that, they are systemic.

Thousands of victims, many now in the diaspora, demand the international community to prevent this machinery from continuing to violate human rights.

We can only endorse this clamour and again draw attention to our recommendations made since our first report.

The international community must act urgently.

I will talk in particular about the new constitutional overhaul, which took effect just a week ago and is the final piece in Daniel Ortega and Rosario Mario's calculated campaign to wipe out cheques and balances, tighten their grip on power and turn repression into law.

A Co presidency tailor made for Ortega and Mario, complete with the option to name their children as vice presidents, seems less like a constitution and more like a royal decree.

The man who once fought against a family dictatorship has now built one that is even more grotesque.

But this constitution doesn't just cement the rule of law of one family.

It buries any remaining civil space and guarantees that Nicaraguans whose rights are violated have nowhere to turn.

Ortega and Mario now rule over the judiciary, the legislature and the electoral system, which under the constitution have been reduced to mere bodies to be coordinated by the presidency.

Under the new constitution, Ortega and Mario can now strip away all rights almost at will, some in the military to act as their police enforcers and unleash masked volunteer police, now enshrined in the constitution to do their dirty work.

Among other provisions, the reform deletes the explicit constitutional prohibition against torture, eliminates the ban on censorship of the press, and enshrines the removal of citizenship for those declared to be, quote, enemies, I'm sorry, traitors to the homeland.

This new constitution sounds the death knell for fundamental rights and the rule of law in Nicaragua.

Thank you everyone to be here and attend this conference.

As you know, we're gonna present the report on Friday, February 28.

I'm I'm gonna tackle the the issue of deprivation of nationality and confiscation.

The Group has expressed serious concerns about several human rights violation through the different phrases of repression that we identify.

Identify.

Since 2018, the numbers of person without nationality is approximately 452.

This number has been accredited by the Group directly or indirectly through witness lawyers, documents, judicial files, etcetera.

This this situation suggests to us the universe of a stateless person could be much larger to the deprivation of nationality that had not been reported to those affected.

One of one of the basis of the testimony collected and the documentation analysed by the group give us reasonable grounds to believe that the government of Nicaragua continually violates the right to hold a pass, a passport or other travel document of person who are opponent or perceive ASAT and their families.

What we call it means to those person a civil death because they don't have any document to try to continue their life or build another life in a foreign country.

And also we call that the the we name that the victim are also in a situation of economic death among 453% arbitrarily deprived of their nationality are being confiscate their asset bank accounts, pension contribution, pension contribution share share business.

And these have been proven with with the with the group.

This but not also to the victim directly, but also to the family members.

And this violation by extension, are particularly serious when children's are involved.

In addition of the loss of nationality has nullified the possibility of accessing protection and service, especially those related of the guarantee of basic economic rights and also to have a new life in a in a foreign country.

Lastly, the National Army and Defence Intelligence, The intelligence and the army worked together identify individuals for expulsion monitoring critique through political surveillance and also are involved as as we we related in the report, the Procuradoria and other institution relating with the asset and property.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, everyone.

Now we'll open the floor to questions.

First in the room, do we have any in the room?

Yes, in the back.

If you could just please identify yourself and the media outlet that you work for.

Thank you very much.

Hi, I'm Antonio Brotto, I work for a Spanish news agency FA and my question is related with your call for international action.

You mentioned in the report that is needed to address human rights violation in Nicaragua.

And do you think the there is positive steps in this way from Argentina who last last month order the the detention of Daniel Ortega and and Vice President Rosario Murillo and also by the US government who has launched an investigation into labour and and human rights abuses in Nicaragua?

[Other language spoken]

These are first steps taking by Members or international community.

One is related to criminal action regarding those main responsible for the machinery that we are presenting in our report, though it is on the universal jurisdiction and depends on those responsible and being indicted by the Argentinian authorities, their presence in the territory of Argentina in order to proceed with the proceedings.

This is a first step to have an international arrest warrant.

By the way, the standard of proof that you need in order to issue an international arrest warrant at that stage of the proceedings coincides with our standard of proof.

So I think we have added to the preliminary findings of authorities in Argentina that made them believe that they have enough evidence to issue an arrest warrant.

The second is in the US under Section 301 of the US Trade Act is an unprecedented investigation because the US Trade Act normally is or has been limited to paved the way for activities in multilateral frameworks like the WTO.

There have been some other activities since 2018 regarding 301, the Section 301 investigations, but to the broad extent that it is now intended to be applied to the situation Nicaragua.

That's the very first time you will not find any case at present regarding the situation in Nicaragua under the the the Trade Act.

But this brings me like to another topic which is very much related to this, which is having free trade agreements to take seriously their human rights conditionalities that are implied in these treaties, in particular the Free Trade association agreement between the European Union and Central America.

We think that Nicaragua is a case in point since since this treaty has come into force mid last year to enforce the global human rights clause that is at the beginning of this treaty and should be taken seriously by the new Commission, European Commission in this way.

If I could just add, I mean, the, the, this report is a call for global action and part of that action is helping Nicaraguans who have been expelled from their, from their homeland and, and Spain in particular.

I think it's it's important to recognise has has played a huge role by offering citizenship to those hundreds of Nicaraguans who have been deprived of their citizenship.

Another action that we're calling for is for a state to consider taking Nicaragua to the International Court of Justice for this practise of stripping citizens of their citizenship.

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.

And so we're calling for states to consider jointly or individually to hold the government of Nicaragua, Nicaragua accountable at the International Court of Justice.

[Other language spoken]

OK, any more questions from the room?

All right.

We'll take one online, a couple online.

The 1st is from Gabriella.

If you could please go ahead.

Yes, thank you very much for this briefing.

And I'm Gabriela Sotomayor from Proceso, Mexico and El Nacional de Venezuela.

My, my questions are you, you mentioned that those, those violations of human rights are more than generalised and, and systematic.

They are systemic.

So would you say that this, I mean, this may amount to crimes against humanity.

Do you think that this is also one of the violations that could go to the international justice?

I mean, I, I see international penal justice or court international.

I'm sorry, I'm forgot the name in English, but you just mentioned it that that is one question and and the other is a what?

What do you think about the Human Rights Council?

Because you are mentioning in your report that these violations are from 2018 and we are in 2025.

So do you think that the situation of Nicaragua has been forgotten by the Human Rights Council?

What happened there?

I mean, there are countries that are very powerful and they don't want to talk about this, about Nicaragua.

What what, what are your thoughts on this?

[Other language spoken]

Thank you very much for your question.

To begin with the last question, the Human Rights Council has not forgotten Nicaragua.

The very reason why we are sitting here is that the Human Rights Council extended our initial mandate of one year for another two years and we are expect the Human Rights Council to extend our mandate that is running out by the end of this month for another two years.

This is asked to the Human Rights Council.

As to your first question, we came to the conclusion since our very first report that there is an ongoing attack against the civilian population as a contextual element of crimes against humanity.

And inter Alien came to the conclusion there that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the crime of persecution from political grounds is being committed in Nicaragua.

You will find in our report that we come at this time to the conclusion that this attack is ongoing.

And this is the very reason why many of the human rights violations that we have detected in the last cycle of investigations would qualify under those acts of violations that are listed under customary international law as crimes against humanity.

And having said customary international law, there is no jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.

Prima facie, there might be some elements in the violations that we found that have extraterritorial implications that might trigger our jurisdiction of the court.

Bangladesh is a case in point here that this is at that point speculative.

So we wouldn't, we wouldn't say that there is no jurisdiction, but it is more complicated to make a case on Nicaragua at present.

Now what we have said since the first mandate we have is that once there would be a transition in Nicaragua, there is a possibility to refer the case to the court.

But the best ones ratified the the Rome Statute and there have been cases in Africa that have been practising this.

But the best way to do justice regarding the human rights violations once there is a transition in Nicaragua is to have people standing trial in Nicaragua, which will put the building block for a new rule of law and in the country.

[Other language spoken]

Please go ahead and then we'll go to the next question.

Yes, thank you very much.

[Other language spoken]

You mentioned that the international community could unified and and referred the case to the International Criminal Court.

But what else can the international community do to try to persuade the government of Nicaragua to call for elections or, you know, to have distant transition?

This change what what else can they do?

[Other language spoken]

First of all, let's be clear, we were not talking about the International Criminal Court as as as as Jan mentioned, the International Criminal Court does not have jurisdiction necessarily over Nicaragua, which is not a state party.

We've been talking about the International Court of Justice, which resolves disputes between states.

Nicaragua is actually the country that has gone more to the International Court of Justice against other countries than any country has in the last 20 years.

And we believe that States, and 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.

You know, the international community cannot just bear witness.

It needs to take concrete measures.

These include targeted sanctions against members of the of the of the government.

And in our report, we, we will, we, we say that we will.

We have a number of names of people who in addition to Daniel Ortega and Rosario Mario, we believe there is sufficient grounds to say they have a case to answer for their participation in crimes.

We will be publishing, we will be sending these names to the government of Nicaragua.

And at the end of this session, we will be publishing a report that contains many of these names.

And we believe that these these are people who could face ultimately potentially criminal liability or or targeted sanctions prosecutions like the one that have gone on in Argentina, we believe could be started potentially in other countries.

So this is this is the international community cannot remain silent as Nicaragua descends into silence and and repression.

Just just to add to that question and thank you for the question about I know there's a lack of hopes to how to dismantle the situation and entry into a process to recover democracy.

And we, we, we have a lot of meeting with victims and people outside Nicaragua or or people in in different forums and ask for the same question as John mentioned, the human right Council that's not for the Nicaraguan and that is the reason that we're here.

And we expect the renewal of the mandate, but also a lot of recommendation that Richard mentioned that we have been enlarged recommendations in our first report.

Also we just for the for for the public to know we maintain 7 and meeting bilateral meetings and multilateral meeting with a lot of government of different part of the world.

And to make sure that the Nicaragua situation is on the on the table.

And we discuss different possible ways to those country to strengthen their effort to to make to to put the Nicaragua in the spotlight.

I also mentioned always that there's certain and I know I'm going to stay in the obvious, but there are certain conflicts in the war that over shadow the Nicaragua situation.

Venezuela is 1 case and we are not talking about Venezuela.

We are here to talking about Nicaragua and another as you know, several war that unfortunately are ongoing.

So it's a particular situation that we are trying to enforce all the recommendation even we in in our report talking about what I, I, I focus on people deprived of nationality and confiscation of assets.

We also thanks a lot of country for giving certain documents to the people that are living abroad to, to and facilitate document to them to continuous for their life.

So we call also to to ensure that refugee is tattoo determination and asylum process including under the broader criteria of the Cartagena declaration of refugee could be something that the rest of the country can help.

So there's many, many action that we are taking to make to make sure that we can we can track the situation of Nicaraguan and call the international community for actions.

[Other language spoken]

We'll take another question online, this one from Lauren Sierra from the Swiss News Agency.

[Other language spoken]

Thanks for the press conference.

Could you elaborate on the role of Rosario Mario, because you mentioned the the top down chain of command and that's constitutional reform.

So what does that new status of Co president changing that in in that machinery that you that you mentioned and how are the hierarchies between the presidential couple organised in order to lead the machinery of violations?

[Other language spoken]

Well, to begin with, whether there's a vice president or a Co president is in political terms important.

But if it is in like the actual and ongoing violations and the chains of command that are de facto links and not formal links only.

In many cases they're over shadowed by institutions.

But the links are on a personal level, mainly through the party structure and this is where we have identified the main role of Rosario Mario.

Rosario Mario is, if you will see in the annex to our report the what we I have called you and the tentacles is normally the tentacle that is used through the party structure within the different patterns of violations that we have identified the head of these chains of command and that's her role in fact.

And whether she's Co president or not doesn't make any difference in this regard.

The Co presidency may have some implications regarding succession in the political regime in Nicaragua, but not in terms of the operations of the violations that we have been detecting since the last three years.

[Other language spoken]

Let's go to back to Gabriella, if you could please go ahead.

[Other language spoken]

Thank you very much.

And my, my question is, did you try to meet with, with authorities of Nicaragua here in Geneva?

What did they say about the report?

If you can share with us what, what happened and if you're going to meet especially about Nicaragua with the **** Commissioner for Human Rights.

[Other language spoken]

Sorry, we have been sending since the beginning of our mandate.

16 not verbals, formal communications to the authorities.

Also see the mission that represents Nicaragua here in Geneva.

At the beginning of our mandate, the Government of Nicaragua sent a letter to the Secretary General of the United Nations and the President of the Council denying our existence.

And this has been since then the relation or non relation that we had with the government.

Nevertheless, we were reaching out and still reach out.

The last, not their ball we sent on the 10th of December on the Human Rights Day last year, and we hadn't received any response.

We of course, according to best practises and the usage diplomatic, share our draught reports always with the government seeking their point of view.

But as in the last three occasions, this time we haven't received any, any, any reaction of the government to we will share also like the findings on individual responsibilities that will then be published in the conference room paper by the end of the 58th session of the Council and expect the government to react and engage on this gap.

And so we redo our due diligence, both in diplomatic and legal terms, and we would expect the government to do the same.

In addition, just to make clear to Gabriela, I think it's the person that asked the question to make clear, we never been able to go to the territory of Nicaragua.

So all the interview and all the thing that we documented, which is a lot, as John say, at the very beginning of the conference, it's all in, in, in mission, on the field in countries outside Nicaragua.

We've never been able to be in the territory, which may more difficult obvious to the member of the group and to the investigation staff to, to, to access to, to information in both eyes.

So that to clarify also another point of your questions.

[Other language spoken]

Any more questions from the room or online?

OK, If not, do you guys have any more anything else just to add to anyone?

[Other language spoken]

All right.

Well, that wraps up this press conference today.

[Other language spoken]