The United Nations Office at Geneva
Multimedia Newsroom
HRC Press conference: Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua
/
14:22
/
MP4
/
926.3 MB
Speakers:
- Jan-Michael Simon, Chair
- Ariela Peralta Distefano, Expert Member (joining remotely)
- Reed Brody, Expert Member (joining remotely)
Update on the human rights situation in Nicaragua by the UN Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua following the release of their latest report.
Speakers:
- Jan-Michael Simon, Chair
- Ariela Peralta Distefano, Expert Member (joining remotely)
- Reed Brody, Expert Member (joining remotely)
Teleprompter
All right, we'll go ahead and start.
[Other language spoken]
Good afternoon, everyone.
Thank you for joining us today at this press conference with the Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua.
As you may know, the Group of Experts was established by the Human Rights Council in 2022 to investigate all alleged human rights violations and abuses committed in Nicaragua since April of 2018.
The group released its latest report earlier this morning along with a press release and a pair of infographics and presented their findings to the Human Rights Council here in Geneva.
Now they're here with us to answer any questions you may have.
We'll start this press conference off with opening remarks by the group's chair, Mr Jan Michael Simon, followed by Mr Reed Brody, who is joining us online Now.
I pass the floor to the chair and we can begin.
[Other language spoken]
Thank you, Todd.
[Other language spoken]
[Other language spoken]
Today, our group presents its latest findings on enforced disappearances and death in custody.
This report should be seen in the work of we have been like developing in the last four years since 2022.
Over these past four years, we have documented not only recurring violations, but also the institution's chains of command and mechanisms for which those violations are reproduced.
Todd just mentioned that we uploaded 2 infographics for this report.
I invite everybody to have a closer look to the chains of command responsible for all the findings that we present in this report regarding human rights violations.
[Other language spoken]
We have verified more than 150 cases of enforced disappearances since 2018, including almost 30 people who remain disappeared today.
We have also documented deaths in custody of persons detained on on political grounds.
And these are not isolated incidents that fit patterns repeatedly documented throughout our investigations in the last four years, ladies and gentlemen.
And two months ago, Daniel Ortega announced the end of a competitive elections in Nicaragua.
That announcement made headlines around the world.
But the announcement was not the story.
The story was that the foundations of democratic governance had already been dismantled.
This should have been the headlines.
Without human rights and fundamental freedoms, elections become meaningless.
What our new report documents is the result of all of this enforced disappearances, thefts in custody, and a system that turns fear, uncertainty and cruelty into instruments of political control.
The significance of this report lies not only in what is new.
IT lies in what the new evidence tells us about the evolution of repression in Nicaragua.
The disappearance of people is here no longer merely a consequence of repression.
It has become one of its instruments in in particular from 2023 on, and death in custody is its most irreversible consequence.
The principal features of the situation in Nicaragua are no longer in doubt.
This is why the issue is no longer 1 of diagnosis and it was when we first got our mandate in 20/20/2022.
The victims have told their story to us.
More than 2000 interviews we have conducted until today and the evidence is on record.
4 reports to the Human Rights Council with nine additional reports, the latest today.
The question now is not what we know.
The question is what the international community chooses to do with what it knows.
[Other language spoken]
Now we'll pass the floor to Reed Brody, who is joining us online.
[Other language spoken]
[Other language spoken]
[Other language spoken]
I think my connection is a little unstable, but thank you, Jan.
As as Jan mentioned, today we publish a report on enforced disappearances and deaths in custody.
The government of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Mario has perfected its repressive apparatus and methods.
Arbitrary detentions continue, disappearances have become a deliberate instrument of control, and death in custody has become a foreseeable consequence of a system that places many political prisoners beyond the reach of the law.
Our report today documents 161 cases of enforced disappearances since 201829 of those people remain disappeared today, and the pattern is consistent.
[Other language spoken]
Their families go from police station to prison to hospital and are told nothing.
What began in 2018 as disappearances lasting days or weeks has become since 2023, a practise of of disappearances lasting months and even years.
We also found the government responsible for the deaths in custody of eight people detained on political grounds, including Umberto Ortega, the Co president's own brother, and the mosquito leader, Brooklyn Rivera.
Most were older men, many with chronic illnesses, held in unsanitary conditions, often incommunicado, and denied the medical care they needed.
These deaths were not accidents.
They were foreseeable.
And these practises aren't the work of a few rogue officials.
The police, the prison system, prosecutors and the courts act in coordination under the centralised control of the Co presidents.
Our report examines in depth the death of Brooklyn Revere, the indigenous leader who fought for the collective rights of indigenous communities in Nicaragua's Caribbean coast for four decades.
And the government's response has been to dismantle everything.
He built It shut down his party's radio stations, stripped the party of its legal status, and in the end, came for him.
In April 2023, Rivera spoke at a New York forum, the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, and when he tried to fly home, he found that he'd been banned from returning to his own country.
He crossed back in anyway, and a few months later, police forced their way into his home without a warrant and took him away.
His family was told nothing.
For much of the next 2 1/2 years, Brooklyn Rivera simply vanished.
And then suddenly, this May, the government released photographs of Rivera, emaciated on a ventilator, and four days later it announced his death.
And he was buried that same day in Managua under police guard, not among his people as his own wishes and the mosquito tradition required.
Eight of his relatives and close associates who came to claim his body were detained, and today they too remain disappeared after 2 1/2 years of silence.
The government issued 5 bulletins in his last days.
We examined those bulletins with the help of Physicians for Human Rights.
Those bulletins contradict each other on the most basic question, how he died.
In the first, most detailed report itself, there's no mention of COVID.
By the time he was dead, it had become the official cause.
By the government's own account, 4 of Rivera's organs systems were failing a condition with roughly one in four chance of surviving 30 days.
Yet hours before he died, the officials reported no major change in his condition.
Either they knew and didn't say, or no one was watching closely enough to know.
Both point to the same failure of care.
What happened to Brooklyn Rivera was possible because there is no one left in Nicaragua who can be asked to account for it.
[Other language spoken]
That is what the absence of rule of law looks like.
Not an abstraction, but a 73 year old man who disappears into the custody of his own state and a family that is not even allowed to bury him.
Until Nicaragua has institutions capable of answering for that, accountability will have to come from outside the country.
Brooklyn Rivera's death should be a wake up call for the international community to act.
[Other language spoken]
Now we'll open the floor to questions.
We'll start with those in the room.
If you have any questions, please identify yourself in the media outlet that you work for.
OK, we'll start in the back.
[Other language spoken]
[Other language spoken]
I am Antonio Grotto from Spanish news agency FA.
I just wanted to ask if the 8 deaths in custody that are detailed in the report, are they the, the whole number or just the tip of the iceberg?
If, if is the second case, do you have an estimated number of how many people could could have died in in custody?
And also I want to know what's the relationship between your, your mission and the government of, of Nicaragua right now after one year out of the Human Rights Council?
Is there any contact?
Are they criticisms of your work like there there were before?
[Other language spoken]
So as to your last questions, we haven't sent since the beginning of our mandate or I think 22 official letters to the government to engage with us.
There has not been any response so far.
Two of these letters were sent this year without any response.
So this is a consistent pattern that we had since our the beginning of our Monday that nothing has changed so far.
Regarding the deaths in custody, as to of today, there are 29 people who were disappeared.
We cannot say what happened to them, whether they're alive, where there are or whether they're dead.
So at least you should add to the AIDS deaths in custody 29 cases where we do not about know about the fate of the people nor whether they're under us or whether they're still there or not.
So this is what we know and we would like to know at least what has happened and has happened to these 29 people.
OK Did Mr Brody, do you have anything to add on that?
No, no, that's, that's, that's correct.
I mean, there's there's so much we don't know and so many people are afraid in Nicaragua.
OK, we lost you for a second.
We don't have any sound.
[Other language spoken]
All right.
We'll come back to you.
Do if do we have any more, do we have any more questions from the room?
[Other language spoken]
And none online.
[Other language spoken]
Do we do you have anything else to add either of the experts?
[Other language spoken]
All right.
If not, then that will bring us to the end of this press conference.
Thank you everyone, for joining us and have a good day.
[Other language spoken]