UN experts tell General Assembly that Nicaragua committed systematic human-rights abuses News
By Duma.gov.ru, CC BY 4.0, Link
UN experts tell General Assembly that Nicaragua committed systematic human-rights abuses

The UN Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua (UNGHREN) told the UN General Assembly on Thursday that Nicaragua’s government has carried out systematic human-rights violations, some amounting to crimes against humanity. The experts urged Nicaraguan authorities to release people arbitrarily detained and end enforced disappearances.

The experts’ findings draw on more than 1,900 interviews and 9,300 documents detailing state policies of repression, including enforced disappearances and deprivation of nationality.

UNGHREN expert member Ariel Peralta said that perceived opponents of the Ortega government have been stripped of their nationality as “a tool to punish and erase those who dare to dissent.” This practice has reportedly targeted hundreds in the Nicaraguan diaspora, stripping them of their passports and denying them re-entry to Nicaragua.

Additionally, the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances has remarked multiple times on the growing seriousness of the disappearances taking place in Nicaragua, which “appear to be ordered at the highest levels of authority and are designed to instill fear across society, sending the message that anyone who voices a differing opinion may suffer the same fate.”

In June, Roberto Samcam, a retired army major and well-known government critic, was murdered in Costa Rica. Samcam had fled Nicaragua after participating in anti-government protests in 2018. Samcam denounced the Nicaraguan military’s involvement in the suppression of protests, and in 2020, served in the Court of Conscience, organized by Costa Rica’s Arias Foundation for Peace and Human Progress, documenting the testimony of victims of human rights abuses for use in a future trial.

The group’s findings come after Nicaragua’s legislature ratified constitutional reforms in February, consolidating legislative, judicial and executive powers in the office of the president. The constitutional reforms also created the role of co-president, a post occupied by Rosario Murillo, Ortega’s wife, and allow fundamental rights to be suspended during a state of emergency.

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