Pedro Joaquín Rodríguez

Pedro Joaquín Rodríguez: a worker sentenced for calling for an end to the repression

When the whole of Nicaragua came out to protest civically in April 2018, Pedro Joaquín Rodríguez was also among those calling for change and the country ‘s return to the democratic path.

On May 30, 2018, the day Mother’s Day is celebrated in Nicaragua, the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo decided to shoot at peaceful protesters, leaving a wave of wounded and dead, bloodying the celebration.

Pedro Rodríguez was in that march. Like thousands of others, he was miraculously saved from that massacre, but some photographs that circulated on social networks exposed his participation in the peaceful demonstration, making him a target of the Prosecutor’s Office and the Police.

On March 16, 2020, social networks announced his arrest: the regime’s Police had taken him away when he was on his way to work at a grocery distributor in the Mercado Oriental.

The Prosecutor’s Office alleged during the trial that took place in July of that same year, that Rodríguez had committed a robbery on March 11, but despite the strong evidence of his defense that showed that on that day he was visiting customers of the distributor and making collections, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

In the trial, the Prosecutor’s Office decided to use his participation in the May 30 demonstrations as if this were a crime when Rodríguez only went because, like thousands of Nicaraguans, they were crying out for the repression unleashed by the regime in 2018 to end. .

Pedro Joaquín Rodríguez did not commit any crime, he was a worker who earned his living in the eastern market and his family misses him every day.

Freedom for Pedro Joaquín Rodríguez!

We demand from the Ortega-Murillo regime: Free Nicas NOW!