UN denounces a long list of irregularities in the Nicaraguan elections

The elections of November 7 in Nicaragua, in which President Daniel Ortega obtained 75% of the votes, were surrounded by numerous irregularities and most of the opposition was prevented from participating in them, the Office of the UN for Human Rights.

The UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, Nada Al-Nashif, assured this Tuesday that In those elections, Nicaragua lost the opportunity to advance “towards a peaceful and democratic solution to the political, social and human rights crisis that has affected the country since 2018.”

Instead, “the worrying deterioration of civil and political rights during the electoral process led to the arbitrary exclusion of many Nicaraguans from participating in the elections, especially those who held opinions different from those of the party in power,” he said. .

In the electoral period between May and October, the UN office headed by High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet documented the arbitrary detention of at least 39 politicians, human rights defenders, businessmen, journalists, and peasant and student leaders, including seven possible candidates. to the elections.

All of them “were detained based on legal provisions incompatible with international human rights standards,” said Al-Nashif, who denounced that 35 of these people are still detained in the “Nuevo Chipote” pre-trial detention center, on the outskirts of Managua. .

“Many have been detained incommunicado for more than 90 days, some in prolonged solitary confinement, and have only been able to see their relatives on isolated occasions, “lamented the” number two “of the high commissioner in a special session of the Human Rights Council on Nicaragua.

The conditions in which these detainees remain pose a real risk to their physical and mental integrity, and may constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or even constitute torture, he stated in his speech.

To these arrested, the UN office adds another eight activists and journalists arrested during the election weekend and in subsequent days, of which only three have been released, while the rest are also held incommunicado.

The deputy high commissioner stressed that all those arbitrarily detained “must be released immediately,” and the legal personality of political parties and civil society organizations that lost it in the months prior to the elections must also be restored.

In this sense, Al-Nashif recalled that three political parties lost their legal status before the elections, “leaving important political groups that emerged from the 2018 protests without the ability to present candidates.” (I)