Human rights experts are calling for sanctions against President Daniel Ortega’s government.
Nicaragua’s government has committed serious and systematic violations that amount to crimes against humanity, according to a United Nations-appointed team of human rights experts, which is calling for international sanctions against the government.
The three-member body said on Thursday that the government has committed and continues to commit torture, extrajudicial killings and arbitrary detention since 2018.
It names President Daniel Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo, who is his wife, as participants in the violations and calls for international legal action and sanctions against those involved.
“The aim (of the government) is to eliminate in various ways all dissenting or dissenting voices in the country,” Jan Simon, president of the Group of Human Rights Experts for Nicaragua, told journalists at a briefing to present the findings in Geneva. . Switzerland said the government “used the functions of the state as a weapon against the population”.
“This has led the Nicaraguan people to live in fear,” he said.
The report also condemned Ortega’s government for depriving 222 opponents of their nationality after they were loaded onto a plane and flown to the United States last month.
Nicaragua’s diplomatic mission in Geneva did not respond to a request for comment on the report’s findings.
The group of experts said they had sent 12 letters to the government since they started work a year ago, as well as the final report, but never received a reply.
Ortega, now 77 years old, first came to power as the leader of the left-wing Sandinista movement that overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in a revolution in the 1970s.
He was in and out of office over the years, but took power again in 2007 and has ruled ever since.
Human rights groups and the political opposition have long accused his government of severely suppressing civil liberties and its opponents in order to win elections and maintain its grip on the country.
Security forces killed more than 300 people in anti-government protests in 2018.
When asked about the scale of abuses, the experts said they had documented more than 100 cases of executions, hundreds of cases of torture and arbitrary detention, and thousands of cases of political persecution.
Simon said the crisis in Nicaragua is about to get worse and warned of a “humanitarian crisis”.
“We are very concerned about the current situation,” he said.
“It is our sincere hope that this report can help prevent a further spiral of systemic violations and abuses.”
