UN: Ortega’s Nicaraguan govt behind widespread repression
MEXICO CITY (AP) — A United Nations report released Wednesday on four months of unrest in Nicaragua describes a comprehensive effort of repression by the government that extends from the streets to the courts.
The report by the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights calls on the government of President Daniel Ortega to immediately halt the persecution of protesters and disarm the masked civilians who have been responsible for many of the killings and arbitrary detentions.
More than 300 people have been killed in violence since mid-April in this Central American nation. Neighboring Costa Rica has been flooded with thousands of requests for asylum by people fleeing Nicaragua.
The report describes illegal arrests, torture and closed trials. Doctors, professors and judges who have spoken out or protested have been dismissed from their jobs to discourage people from participating in or supporting the protests.
“The level of persecution is such that many of those who have participated in the protests, defended the rights of the protesters, or simply expressed dissenting opinion, have been forced to hide, have left Nicaragua or are trying to do so,” according to the U.N. report.
Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the U.N. human rights chief, told reporters in Geneva that “repression and retaliation against demonstrators continue in Nicaragua as the world looks away.”
Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said the report “highlights what we have been saying for months: Ortega is terrorizing his own people.”
“Until the Nicaraguan people are able to use their voices freely and peacefully, the international community must continue to pressure the regime. Failure to do so will lead to another Venezuela,” Haley said. Ortega’s government dismissed the report as baseless and relying on anti-government media accounts. It denied accusations of excessive use of force against protesters.
“The report is biased and slanted with subjective assertions,” the government said in its response to the U.N. office, also noting that it included no mention of the attempted coup d’etat alleged by Ortega.
It said the U.N. had not been invited to evaluate the human rights situation, but rather to accompany the verification commission established as part of the national dialogue. It accused the U.N. of overstepping its authority and violating Nicaragua’s sovereignty. Later, Ortega said at a rally that “if the tortured person was a Sandinista, he doesn’t exist for the U.N. human rights commission ... for them, the killer coup plotters were little angels.”
In mid-April, retirees and students marched to protest cuts to Nicaragua’s social security benefits decreed by Ortega.