According to projections, Nicaraguans migrate to the US and Costa Rica.
At least 95,000 Nicaraguans have left the country so far in 2021, mainly to the United States, as a result of the crisis that Nicaragua has been experiencing since April 2018 and which has worsened this year with the cascade of arrests of opposition leaders in the framework the electoral context, according to what a local humanitarian organization reported on Thursday.
Lawyer Wendy Flores, from the human rights group Nicaragua Never Again, indicated in a report sent to EFE that “the increase in (state) repression has generated another wave of exile, which includes more than 40 journalists, as well as released prisoners, activists and defenders integrated into different spaces and organizations.”
“This new escalation has caused a new wave of exile mainly to Costa Rica and the United States,” he said.
According to projections based on official statistics from the main destination countries, “in 2021 60,000 people will have migrated to the United States and 35,000 to Costa Rica,” Flores said.
NICARAGUANS PREFER US
The human rights defender, exiled in Costa Rica, said that this is “an unprecedented figure that reveals the seriousness of the situation” in Nicaragua, a country of 6.5 million inhabitants, “and the change in destination of the flow. migration, which is now heading north, a route marked by violence and insecurity. “
Flores warned that these “forced displacements” are the consequence “of a reality marked by violence and persecution in Nicaragua against victims who demand justice, activists, defenders, defenders, released prisoners, organizations, lawyers, doctors, journalists, peasants and the population in general”.
He recalled that 120,000 Nicaraguans were forced to flee the country by “the brutal repression of the Nicaraguan Government” after the anti-government demonstrations that broke out in April 2018, of which more than 80% did so to Costa Rica and the majority due to unauthorized points. or illegally.
Government policy has been to treat Nicaraguans who criticize or denounce the regime as political opponents, “enemies of the revolution,” qualify them as “sell homeland” or “sons of bitches of the Yankee imperialists” or stateless, he criticized.
That is, he warned, Daniel Ortega seeks to “annul his rights as a person, dehumanize any treatment towards them and promote intolerance towards those who are not with the Government at all levels of society.”
With this stigmatization and discrimination, according to Flores, the rupture of the social fabric in the country is deepening and a “culture of hatred is promoted among its followers who harass, threaten, persecute an entire people who demand change.”
THE DRAMA OF THE NICARAGUANS IN EXILE
On the other hand, he regretted that professionals in exile have had to strip off their degrees to survive with dignity and perform any job, and in the case of university students they have not had the opportunity to continue their studies since many of them their academic records in Nicaragua were annulled.
“Most of the people who have left the country did so thinking about a temporary exit and then returning. The reality has been different, because the repression has continued and intensified, returning then is the last and most dangerous option, ”he noted.
Faced with this difficult context, the activist continued, there are no easy answers.
“The only thing that is clear is the need for the international community to adopt stronger measures to support the Nicaraguan people and the increasingly numerous exiled population,” he added.
Nicaragua has experienced a crisis since the popular revolt that broke out in 2018 due to controversial social security reforms and that later became a demand for the resignation of President Ortega, because he responded with force.
The protests, classified by the Executive as an attempted coup, caused at least 328 deaths, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), although local organizations raise the figure to 684 and the Government recognizes 200. (I)
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