Washington DC, Managua, San Jose. June 30, 2022.- After citizen protests demanding the resignation of Daniel Ortega from power, hundreds of Nicaraguans were arrested and became political prisoners who would be prosecuted, tried and sentenced with evidence fabricated by the National Police and the Prosecutor’s Office. of the regime in Nicaragua, charging them with the alleged commission of crimes in retaliation for the legitimate exercise of their rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful demonstration, among others.

Since the beginning of the repression in 2018, through which Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo sought to put an end to the social protest in order to remain in power, committing serious crimes against the Nicaraguan population, including children, adolescents, young students, women, LGBTI+ people, indigenous peoples, older adults, among other particularly vulnerable groups, the release of hundreds of people has been demanded, including the 190 who are still unjustly imprisoned.

Luis Carlos Valle Tinoco, 34, is the person who has spent the most days inside a cell in the La Modelo Penitentiary System, where he was sentenced, allegedly for committing the crimes of aggravated robbery and illegal carrying of weapons, two of the three crimes that the regime imputed to them as a pattern in that first period to justify the arbitrary arrests during the year 2018, in addition to the application in other cases, of criminal types such as organized crime and obstruction of public services.

Until June 13, 2022, Valle Tinoco has spent 1,526 days behind bars as light filters from outside. His conviction is illegal and unjust, and the retaliation against him has been such that he was prevented from attending the funeral of his mother, who died 23 days after he was arbitrarily captured. Just like him, approximately 16 political prisoners have been prevented from being present at the funeral of their mothers or fathers.

In 2019 and 2020, the pattern that the regime used to persecute, try and sentence political prisoners changed and the accusations were for common criminal offenses such as drug trafficking, illegal carrying of weapons, aggravated robbery and murder, with the interest of support the government discourse and pretend that in Nicaragua there are no people who are in prison for political reasons, but criminals.

As of the end of 2020, the Legislative Assembly dominated by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), approved a series of repressive laws, widely questioned by international human rights protection bodies, with the sole objective of deepening its mechanisms of systematic persecution of dissidence. Some of these laws are the Cybercrime Law (Law 1060) and the Law for the Defense of the Rights of the People to Independence, Sovereignty and Self-Determination for Peace (Law 1055), which, although it does not contemplate prison sentences, it is a blank penal norm and refers to the crime of conspiracy to undermine national integrity contained in the Penal Code.

Thus, starting in mid-2021, when the political parties were barely discussing who they would present as presidential candidates, the regime decided to implement these new laws to crush political dissent and persecute people considered as opposition until imprisoning them, among them, 7 people who had run as pre-presidential candidates.

The new wave of repression began on May 28, 2021, with the arbitrary arrest of Walter Gómez and Marcos Fletes, both former employees of the Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation. The persecution escalated after that date, leaving the balance of more than 70 people deprived of liberty between 2021 and 2022 alone. A year has already passed since this escalation began and the list of detainees continues to increase.

Yubrank Suazo, who had been released in 2019, was violently arrested again on May 18, 2022, which shows that the regime does not intend to stop in its desire to lead more Nicaraguans to its inhuman prisons, subjecting them to processes in which has demonstrated the repeated violation of due process guarantees.

As of today, the regime keeps 190 political prisoners in prison and before the end of May, the threats and siege against leaders of the Catholic Church had escalated. The police harassed the bishop of the Diocese of Matagalpa, Monsignor Rolando Álvarez, and the priest Harving Padilla, of the San Juan Bautista Parish in Masaya, in the latter case preventing the congregation from participating in the two Sunday masses scheduled for May 22.

On June 2, the regime decided to arrest Father Manuel Salvador García, 56, pastor of the El Calvario Church in Nandaime, and accused him of committing the crime of injuring a woman after several days in which the official media carried out a campaign against the priest. Currently, it is known that the alleged victim rejected the alleged facts and stated that she had not filed a complaint, for which she was later detained. Recently, the priest was sentenced on June 22, to two years in prison, in another case that was opened for the crime of threats against Sandinista sympathizers.

Little by little, the repression is reaching all Nicaraguans, and the jail is intended to silence the voices of students, independent journalists, human rights defenders, activists, feminist women, politicians, peasant leaders, businessmen, analysts, professors, former government officials, Catholics, evangelicals, LGBTI+ communities, presidential candidates, fathers and mothers of families, their sons and daughters, older adults; all of them Nicaraguans who did not commit any crime. Of special concern is the situation faced by 18 women prisoners for political reasons held in the Directorate of Judicial Assistance of the National Police and in the country’s penitentiary centers, due to the risks to which they are exposed due to their gender, including sexual violence. The regime seems to have no end in its eagerness to resort to different forms of violence to perpetuate itself in power, which demonstrates the lack of will to fulfill its international commitments. It acts in total contempt of the express orders and recommendations of international organizations for the protection of human rights.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has issued 56 communiqués and numerous precautionary measures in favor of political prisoners in Nicaragua since April 2018, all ignored by the Ortega and Murillo regime and added to that, the Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions also has issued 7 opinions that have also been ignored. The Inter-American Court has granted provisional measures to thirty people deprived of their liberty for political reasons who have also been disregarded by the State of Nicaragua.

All these actions add up, but more is needed. As well as the repeated calls of the relatives of political prisoners, the most recent, on May 23, more actions are needed that lead to the immediate release of all people arbitrarily deprived of liberty.

The more time passes, the police detention centers, prisons and even the very houses for those under house arrest gradually deteriorate the lives of those who are paying the price of a wrongful conviction. This situation causes hardly imaginable damage both to those who remain unjustly locked up and to their families, which will have irreparable consequences, affecting their lives, physically, emotionally and their family finances.

Those who suffer under a situation of prolonged isolation are also cause for concern, since this causes serious psychological consequences such as anxiety, stress and depression; as well as cognitive disability and suicidal tendencies, according to specialists on the subject. Additionally, the physical damage caused by the poor diet to which they are subjected, the mismanagement of their medications and the regime’s refusal to allow them to enter a blanket to protect them from the cold give us an idea of ​​the suffering caused by a torturing environment. , in political prisoners.

The lack of recognition of the people detained in Nicaragua as political prisoners has led the State to evade its responsibilities and makes it easier for the allegation that these were arrests to be carried out with political motivations to be considered unfounded.

From the International Institute on Race, Equality and Human Rights (Race and Equality), the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (CENIDH), the Nicaragua Nunca + Human Rights Collective, the Autonomous Women’s Movement (MAM), the Legal Defense Unit (UDJ) and the Registration Unit (UDR), we started the campaign #NicasLibresYa with which we will provide information on who are the political prisoners in Nicaragua, the need for them to be recognized as such in order to proceed with their release immediately as recommended by international bodies for the protection of human rights and member countries of the United Nations and the Organization of American States.

At www.nicaslibresya.org, in addition to viewing the profiles of all the people whose relatives have granted authorizations, users will have access to the documentation corresponding to precautionary and provisional measures granted by the IACHR and the Inter-American Court, respectively, in the section of Library. In addition, the audience will have a space where they can make their contributions by signing communications or sending messages of support for political prisoners.

Our campaign seeks to highlight the multidimensionality of the impacts that arbitrary detentions are having on 190 people detained in Nicaragua for political reasons (172 men and 18 women) according to the update of the Mechanism for the Recognition of Political Prisoners as of May 30, 2022 and to denounce the injustices that are committed in a country governed by an authoritarian regime that controls public institutions and uses them to fabricate crimes and guilty parties, with the sole objective of perpetuating itself in power.

It is time to add more voices that demand from all fronts and accompany the diplomatic efforts for the release of political prisoners in Nicaragua. Only by exerting more pressure will it be possible to reunite these families and begin a process of memory, justice, truth, reparation and guarantees of non-repetition. #NicasLibresYa