Concern for the future of opponents imprisoned in Nicaragua grows: exile or “currency of exchange”

The statement of the president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, that the imprisoned opponents are “stateless” in the service of the United States set off alarms about the bleak future that awaits the detainees: exile or their use as a “bargaining chip.”

During an official ceremony in which he celebrated his re-election, Ortega, who has been in power for 14 consecutive years and will assume another five-year term, on Monday called the imprisoned opponents “sons of bitches of the Yankee imperialists.”

“They should be taken to USAThey are not Nicaraguan, they stopped being. They have no country, ”said Ortega, re-elected on Sunday with 76% of the vote, in an election with seven presidential candidates arrested.

Human rights activists, analysts and relatives of the detainees immediately expressed concern over these statements.

“Hostages”

“We are demanding that political prisoners be released immediately, that they are not used as hostages or bargaining chips in the negotiations that Ortega will surely try to launch,” said the regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean of the NGO International IDEA, Daniel Zovatto.

After the elections, “the prisoners became a liability for Ortega” and he intends to quickly negotiate their release, but he wants to “charge for that” by removing them from the country and thus avoiding his internal leadership, said analyst and former deputy Eliseo Núñez, in the exile.

Since last June, in the middle of the electoral process, 39 opponents were arrested, among them the seven presidential candidates, accused of conspiracy, treason, undermining sovereignty and money laundering crimes, under laws passed last December by the majority. official in Congress.

That group joined some 120 people imprisoned for participating in the 2018 anti-government protests, the repression of which left at least 328 dead and more than 100,000 exiles, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).

“Chess pieces”

The president, who turns 76 on Thursday, accuses opponents of “criminals” and “terrorists” who organized with the help of the United States to carry out a coup with the 2018 protests and who, according to him, tried to conspire again to prevent last Sunday’s elections.

The jurist and human rights activist Yader Valdivia said that “it would be a dirty move by Ortega to release the prisoners, but send them into exile” to prevent “that they continue to demand to democratize the country.”

“It is something systematic of authoritarian governments. Cuba and Venezuela did it with their own opponents, “he said.

Ortega “is going to have to free the opponents. From the humanitarian point of view, it is very good, even outside the country, but it is a bad precedent, taking away someone’s citizenship just because they think differently ”, commented Eliseo Núñez.

For the president of the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (CENIDH), Vilma Núñez, the eventual expulsion of opponents from the country and the dispossession of nationality is a “violation of rights.”

In a conference call, the Assistant Secretary for Americas Affairs at the US State Department, Ricardo Zúñiga, accused Ortega of imposing “a dictatorship based on personalism” and argued that prisoners should not be considered “pieces of Chess”.

Risk to your safety

Relatives of the detained opponents have denounced that their relatives have been isolated, without receiving sun, without eating properly, with extreme weight loss and an uncertain legal situation.

Five groups of family members and the president of CENIDH warned that Ortega’s insults towards the detainees put their safety at “risk”.

“It is worrying that these new insults are implicitly interpreted as an ‘execution order’ so that police and penitentiary officials feel legitimated to carry out acts of political revenge against prisoners,” the relatives warned in a statement issued on Tuesday. .

In Managua, Vilma Núñez agreed that Ortega’s harangue may incite prison officials to increase abuse. For the Nicaraguan president, “the imprisoned opponents are responsible for the emptiness in the streets on election day and the criticism from the international community after the elections,” said Núñez.

The president of the IACHR, Antonia Urrejola, considered it “worrying” that, after the elections, Ortega holds a “stigmatizing” speech against the detainees.

“It is about the criminalization of dissident voices, without minimum guarantees of due process and in prison conditions that do not meet the minimum standard of human rights, leading to mistreatment and even torture,” Urrejola observed.