Following the release and exile of 135 people deprived of their liberty for political reasons in Nicaragua this past 5th of September, different organizations confirmed that 36 people are still detained, among them are indigenous leaders Brooklyn Rivera and Nancy Henríquez.
Brooklyn has been held in a situation of forced disappearance since police took him from his home in the Northern Caribbean region of Nicaragua on the 29th of September 2023. Nancy was detained on October 1st at the 3rd Police District in Managua, where she had been summoned, under false pretenses, allegedly to give her information on the whereabouts of Brooklyn Rivera. She was then transferred to a women’s holding center “La Esperanza”.
We demand that the Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo Regime provide information on the situation of these people and release them immediately, as requested by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights when it granted them provisional measures as of February 1, 2024.
We recall that in line with the The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court enforced disappearances, arbitrary detention, and the deportation of a sector of the population with political motivations constitute crimes against humanity and, both Ortega and Murillo have been accused of committing such crimes against the population since the repression of protests in 2018, as elaborated in reports by the Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua (GHREN).
Liberty for all those in prison for political reasons!
Enforced disappearances are a crime against humanity!