Thank you for providing Human Rights Watch with the opportunity to discuss the alarming human rights situation in Nicaragua.
Human Rights Watch has documented widespread human rights violations committed by the Nicaraguan government since a brutal crackdown against in protesters in 2018 initiated the current human rights crisis.
The government of President Daniel Ortega, in office since 2007, has dismantled all checks on executive power and systematically used repression to silence dissent and curtail fundamental freedoms.
President Ortega and his wife, Vice-President Rosario Murillo, have subordinated the judiciary by packing the courts with judges allied to their party who have arbitrarily persecuted critics and dissidents. The National Assembly, which they control, has enacted far-reaching restrictions on civil and political rights, including freedom of expression and association. The government also controls the Supreme Electoral Council (Consejo Supremo Electoral, CSE), Nicaragua’s electoral oversight body, which has barred opposition political parties.
In 2018, police, in coordination with armed pro-government groups, brutally repressed protestors. More than 300 people were killed and more than 2,000 were injured, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).
We documented that many detainees were subject to serious abuses, in some cases amounting to torture—including electric shocks, severe beatings, nail removal, asphyxiation, and rape. Some were reportedly denied medical care in public health centers, and doctors who provided care said they suffered retaliation.
Nobody has been held accountable for these human rights violations.
Rather, the government has intensified repression. People perceived as government critics, including human rights defenders, journalists, lawyers, political opponents, businesspeople, students and peasant leaders and members of the Catholic church, have increasingly become the targets of harassment, arbitrary detention and prosecution, confiscation of their assets, arbitrary deprivation of their nationality, and many have even been expelled from their own country.
In the run-up to the November 2021 presidential elections, we documented that dozens of critics, including seven would-be presidential candidates, were arbitrarily detained for months, most of them accused of “treason,” and held incommunicado. Many were subjected to repeated interrogations and abusive conditions, including prolonged solitary confinement or insufficient food. The government charged many with serious crimes without providing substantiating evidence.
On February 9, 2023, the government released 222 political prisoners and expelled them to the United States, labeling them as “traitors,” stripping them of their nationality and confiscating their assets. While these releases ended years of suffering for many detainees and their families, the decision to arbitrarily strip them of their nationality is a flagrant violation of international human rights law, including the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. Later, the government also stripped the nationality of 95 other government critics, journalists, human rights defenders, writers, and political leaders.
As of December 2023, over 100 people perceived as government critics remained in detention, according to a Nicaraguan rights group, most charged with “undermining national integrity” and “propagating fake news.” Victims of arbitrary arrest have included an increasing number of members of the Catholic church, including 31 priests and other members of the church, who the government released in two groups in October 2023 and January 2024 and sent to the Vatican.
The government has also dramatically restricted civic space. Since 2018, authorities have canceled the legal status of over 3,500 nongovernmental organizations, including women’s rights groups, religious associations, and medical groups. This figure represents approximately 50% of the non-profit organizations that existed in Nicaragua prior to April 2018, when authorities reported a total of 6,500 organizations operating in the country.
Among the groups stripped of their legal registration are dozens of humanitarian organizations, which played a critically important role in ensuring access to health services, water, and food for low-income, mostly rural communities. Authorities have also canceled the legal status of 28 universities, including, most prominently, the Jesuit-run Universidad Centroamericana (UCA). They have seized their assets and left thousands of students without access to education. A 2020 “foreign agents” law allows the cancelation of legal status of organizations that obtain foreign funds and conduct activities that “interfere in Nicaragua’s internal affairs.”
The government has also closed at least 57 media outlets, the Nicaraguan Platform of NGO Networks reported, and at least 208 media workers have fled the country. Authorities have imposed restrictions to hinder several outlets’ operations, including by blocking access to printing materials. Police have raided and seized assets from Confidencial, 100% Noticias, and La Prensa.
Many people have been forced to leave their country due to political persecution, fear of being arbitrarily detained, and lack of economic opportunities. Between 2018 and June 2022, more than 260,000 Nicaraguans, roughly 4 % of the country’s estimated population, left the country, mostly to Costa Rica and the United States.
The Ortega government has repeatedly refused to cooperate with international human rights bodies. No international human rights monitor has been allowed to access the country since the government expelled staff members of the IACHR and OHCHR in late 2018.The government has not implemented the recommendations of the OHCHR.
Many foreign governments have vocally denounced these abuses, imposed targeted sanctions. Importantly, some, including the UK, helped create, at the United Nations Human Rights Council, a Group of Experts on Nicaragua that, in March 2023 found reasonable grounds to conclude that authorities have committed crimes against humanity, including murder, imprisonment, torture, sexual violence, forced deportation, and persecution on political grounds.
While these international efforts are important and welcomed, so far, neither targeted sanctions nor isolated condemnations have succeeded in exerting sufficient pressure on the Ortega government. Addressing the crisis in Nicaragua requires multilateral coordination and sequencing to pressure the government to restore democratic freedoms and negotiate the reforms that would allow for free and fair elections.
The UK—which has already adopted sanctions on 14 individuals implicated in serious abuses—can continue making important contributions. We respectfully urge you:
- Support the initiative, launched in July 2023 by 179 Nicaraguan victims and 29 human rights organizations, to create a “Group of Friends of the Nicaraguan People”, that should conduct high-level meetings to design, in consultation with Nicaraguan civil society groups and other relevant stakeholders, a strategy to curb abuses, provide pathways to accountability, and push for free and fair elections.
- Promote efforts to conduct criminal investigations against senior officials in the Nicaraguan government under the principle of universal jurisdiction. This principle allows authorities to prosecute certain grave crimes, such as torture, regardless of where they occur and the nationality of victims and suspects.
- Urge international development banks funding Nicaragua, such as the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI), to ensure that their loans are not contributing to human rights violations by the Nicaraguan government.
- Continue imposing targeted sanctions, ideally in coordination with other governments. These should entail travel bans and asset freezes on senior government officials who bear responsibility for human rights violations, including President Daniel Ortega.
Mr. Alton and committee members, thank you for your attention to this critical issue.
