Being a political prisoner of the Ortega regime in Nicaragua

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I clearly remember the day I was transferred to La Esperanza prison, at the end of 2021. There was a phrase that marked me and I remembered until the last day I was in that place: “Everyone is equal here, everyone will be treated equally.” In that small room, with two large windows and views of the offices and a patio, we were five women deprived of liberty: two for common crimes and three accused of “acts of undermining the sovereignty of Nicaragua” and “cybercrime law.” the charges that the Nicaraguan dictatorship uses to criminalize those who demonstrate against it.

But that equality they told us about did not last long. Eight hours later, they separated us into two groups: one included common prisoners, who were sent to the pavilions, while the other three were transferred to an isolation cell. According to the prison authorities, it was to maintain the covid-19 quarantine for 15 days. They were the longest 15 days of my life, which ended up turning into eight months in total isolation before being taken away with the rest of the inmates. The three politicians shared a maximum security cell, where we were taken under crude deception, incommunicado and without knowing what awaited us.

Then I was 20 years old and that was for me the second litmus test of what it means to face a regime like that of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo in Nicaragua. In July 2018, I had left my city, Masaya, to go into exile in Costa Rica, after having treated injured people in the protests against the Government, attending the marches and denouncing on social networks the repression against those of us who asked for our rights to be respected. . I was barely 18 years old and was in my last year of high school. I lived for two years in San José, where I worked for the defense of human rights and continued my training. I entered university to study Political Science, but with the arrival of the covid-19 pandemic, I lost my job and decided to return to my country.

On November 9, 2021, two days after the regime launched its biggest electoral farce after imprisoning all opposition candidates, a group of paramilitaries kidnapped me. The regime accused me of conspiracy to undermine national integrity and propagation of false news, and I was sentenced to 12 years in prison. The evidence they presented against me were messages on my social networks and interviews in which I criticized the Government and its handling of the pandemic. A year later, in February 2023, I was exiled to the United States with 221 other political prisoners who were also stripped of their nationality. I never imagined that my release from prison—that moment I dreamed of so much—would be like that; that paradoxically five years of resistance ended up taking away from me the last thing I had left: the right to be Nicaraguan.

During the time I was in prison, I felt that political prisoners (a word prohibited in prison) were treated by the guards as if we had a contagious disease. That is why we had to be in a maximum security cell, without being able to sunbathe or have communication with other inmates. But I did not remain silent in my complaints, and when I dared to report the mistreatment received in a letter to the warden, of course, I paid the consequences with more restrictions and surveillance.

For Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, thinking differently than them is an extremely dangerous disease. And since 2018, to silence a people tired of their authoritarianism, they do everything within their power: murder, imprison, torture, isolate, close organizations, universities, banish, forcibly displace, persecute the Catholic Church and imprison its priests. .

Women have not been the exception. More than 200 Nicaraguans have been imprisoned since the 2018 protests began. As I saw in La Esperanza, as the prison where I was cynically called, the lesson to “cure” the women who raise their voices to denounce human rights violations humans and the perversities of the dictatorship is confinement, misogyny and machismo; is to subject them to violations of their daily human rights, to not have minimum conditions of dignity in a prison. In these five years, the women who have been prisoners of his regime have denounced rape, sexual abuse, brutal beatings that have caused abortions; There have been mothers separated for years from their young children who were tortured by making their little ones think that they were no longer alive or telling them that they were bad mothers; Others wanted to make us believe that we were bad daughters, sisters or grandmothers just for raising our voices to defend the path of justice and democracy.

Today there are more than 20 political prisoners who remain deprived of liberty in Nicaraguan prisons. I think of Adela, of Damaris, of Gabriela, of Olesia, of Brenda, of Martha, of Anielka and of more women who are suffering from poor nutrition, depression, anxiety, prison stress, who do not have access to medications or medical care, more beyond measuring their blood pressure to take the photo to show that “they are fine.” They are in punishment cells for demanding the freedom of Nicaragua, exposed to scorching heat, mosquitoes, and where they are prone to suffering from skin allergies or developing hypertension.

The prisoners also suffer mistreatment and harassment, and are cut off from the outside world. And this abuse also extends to their relatives when they visit them, something they can only do once a month for just half an hour and after being searched, exposed to insults, inappropriate touching of private parts, threats… Some are even forced to undress and do squats In addition, visits usually occur with guards less than a meter away, writing down what they hear or recording the conversation, in rooms monitored by strategically installed cameras to ensure that they do not hug their loved ones or report everything they experience inside.

These treatments and conditions are received exclusively by political prisoners. In the 15 months that I was in the Esperanza prison, every day I remembered that: “Everyone is equal here, everyone will be treated equally.” Some words that at first were of consolation and relief and that, after a month of interrogations, isolation, a violent capture, without seeing my family, of appearing in court totally alone, without the right to due process with the attack of the laws that today are only ink on a paper in Nicaragua, became part of the torture I suffered. Defending justice and freedom, and waving our flag is today considered a crime in our country. But those of us who pay for it do not have the disease. The true illness is embodied by those who keep a people subjugated that continues to search for ways to heal from the ills that afflict them.

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