More than 1,600 opponents in Nicaragua have been arbitrarily detained since 2018, for participating in or encouraging protests against Daniel Ortega’s government, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) denounced on Wednesday. .
The IACHR, which emanates from the Organization of American States, “has succeeded in establishing that 1,614 people have been arbitrarily deprived of their liberty, for their participation or their support in social demonstrations”, between April 2018 and May 2020, indicates a published report. in Washington.
These opponents, who were in the majority of cases released, had been detained in crowded and unsanitary cells, without sufficient beds, and sometimes in solitary confinement, the report said.
In Nicaragua, protests that began in April 2018 were aimed at opposing social security reform. Then the protesters demanded the president’s departure, because of the unease caused by the violent repression exercised against the demonstrators by the government.
According to the report entitled “People Deprived of Liberty in Nicaragua amid Human Rights Crisis”, the repression has left at least 328 dead and more than 100,000 opponents have gone into exile.
The arrests were from the outset massive and violent with the intention of “punishing or suppressing a position of opposition to the current Nicaraguan regime,” says the document.
The opposition currently has more than 100 jailed dissidents.
For the government, the reports issued by the IACHR on Nicaragua are biased.
In December 2018, the government expelled an IACHR commission that had visited Nicaragua to monitor the implementation of the recommendations made by the body to overcome the political crisis in the country.