The Government of Nicaragua is eliminating all forms of civil organization in the country, in particular those that have to do with the Catholic Church, according to a report presented this Tuesday by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, which shows that the crisis is deepening more and more.
The organization indicated that the constant violations of the rights of association, press, expression, freedom and justice, among others, raise fears about the way in which the municipal elections will be held next November.
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“The attacks on freedom of association have increased exponentially. This year the legal personality of 1,512 human rights organizations, development assistance organizations, professional associations, including doctors, and entities associated with the Catholic Church has been cancelled,” said a representative of the UN body.
Closure of civil organizations
The Director of Field Operations of the High Police Station, Christian Salazar, indicated that with this new wave of repression already adds up to 1,578 organizations that have been forced to close since 2018, year in which citizens took to the streets to demand democratic reforms, a movement that was crushed with great violence.
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Nearly 200 people remain in arbitrary detention in connection with the socio-political crisis that has been going on since then. Of them, fifty were imprisoned in the electoral context of 2021 and recently sentenced, some up to 13 years in prison in trials that were not fair, the UN said.
Even prison is not enough for the authorities, since many of these prisoners have been denied any contact with their families for more than a year, according to the report presented to the UN Human Rights Council, which meets in Geneva.
The church and the press, attacked
In the presentation, it was mentioned that in a large police operation, transmission equipment was seized from a Catholic radio station that broadcast from a parish in Sébaco, Matagalpa, whose bishop, along with eight other people, were arrested and transferred to the capital, Managua. .
The events occurred in mid-August and a judge extended their detention for ninety days.
Freedom of the press is also being stifled, with twenty radio and television stations closed this year alone.most of them of a religious nature, while many staff members of the country’s largest newspaper have had to go into exile.
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They join the 120 journalists who have fled the country since 2018.
This crisis situation has led to 200,000 Nicaraguans becoming refugees and asylum seekers, 75% of them in Costa Rica.
The seriousness of exile is also evident through the numbers of migrants from Nicaragua detained by the United States border authorities, which have risen from around 5,500 in 2018 to more than 84,000 so far this year.
reactions
From Managua, the attorney general of Nicaragua, Wendy Morales, responded electronically to the report, which she totally rejected, warning that the government does not accept the recommendations it makes and that they include initiating a national dialogue and freeing political prisoners.
He argued that the United States and other Western countries use these recommendations “to try to submit us to their will” and that in reality it is “a way of meddling in the internal affairs of Nicaragua.”
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The United States and other Western countries use these recommendations to try to bend us to their will.
In the comments that followed these interventions, the delegation of Ecuador -on behalf of a group of 46 countries- expressed concern about the situation in Nicaragua, in particular about the impact on the right to education of the closure of universities and the rule that submits academic programs to the approval of a central body.
The European Union denounced “a generalized repression that is suffocating the country” and the growing number of political prisoners, some of whom are denied medical treatment or subjected to incommunicado detention.
EFE
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