The US has secured the discharge of 135 political prisoners held in Nicaragua, together with college students and members of a religion organisation.
In an announcement on Thursday, US Nationwide Safety Adviser Jake Sullivan mentioned the prisoners had been among the many 1000’s of Nicaraguans caught up in a multiyear rights crackdown by the federal government of President Daniel Ortega.
The prisoners had been despatched to neighbouring Guatemala and will relocate from there to the US, in accordance with Sullivan.
Guatemalan President Bernardo Arevalo’s workplace confirmed a airplane carrying previously detained Nicaraguans had landed within the nation early on Thursday.
“Nobody must be put in jail for peacefully exercising their elementary rights of free expression, affiliation, and working towards their faith,” Sullivan mentioned in a assertion.
He mentioned the political prisoners had been arrested as a result of they had been thought of a menace to the “authoritarian rule” of Ortega and his vice chairman and spouse, Rosario Murillo. He referred to as on Nicaragua to “instantly stop the arbitrary arrest and detention of its residents for merely exercising their elementary freedoms”.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken additionally hailed the discharge in a submit on the social media platform X.
“Nicaraguans deserve democracy and freedom from persecution of their residence nation,” the highest diplomat wrote.
The announcement comes two days after the United Nations Human Rights Workplace launched a report saying that Ortega’s authorities continues to “persecute not solely those that specific dissenting opinions but in addition any particular person or organisation that operates independently or doesn’t fall instantly beneath their management”.
The report detailed dozens of circumstances the place detainees had been “tortured by means of varied types of sexual abuse and electrical shocks”.
The crackdowns largely started amid the student-led protests that swept the nation in 2018.
These protests had been sparked by a proposed social safety legislation that might have elevated employee contributions whereas decreasing pensions and different advantages.
Tens of 1000’s of individuals took to the streets for peaceable demonstrations, however Ortega’s authorities declared their protests unlawful and deployed paramilitary forces. From the beginning of the protests in April 2018 to July 2019, an estimated 355 folks had been killed.
Ortega’s sturdy response has been seen as a part of a broader autocratic lurch. The president, who got here to energy in 2007, has since lifted presidential time period limits and consolidated all branches of presidency beneath his management.
His administration has continued to take actions to tamp down dissent, together with earlier than the newest elections in 2021.
Authorities arrested or pressured into exile dozens of opposition candidates within the lead-up to the vote. In addition they imprisoned a number of leaders of the nation’s influential Catholic Church, who served as mediators in the course of the protests.
Final week, as an illustration, Ortega’s authorities banned 169 nongovernmental teams, bringing the overall variety of banned organisations to greater than 4,000 since 2018.
In an announcement earlier this week, UN Excessive Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk mentioned it was “distressing to see civic area persevering with to be severely eroded in Nicaragua, and the way the train of elementary civil and political rights is changing into an increasing number of troublesome”.
The UN report additionally raised issues over the proposal of a brand new legislation that might enable Nicaraguan authorities to prosecute people residing overseas for sure crimes. The legislation may very well be used to “stress and intimidate exiled residents and foreigners for the reliable train of their proper to freedom of expression, and different rights”, the report mentioned.
Amongst these launched this week had been 13 members of the Texas-based evangelical Christian group Mountain Gateway. Authorities in Nicaragua had accused the group of cash laundering and organised crime, expenses it has denied.
The discharge follows an analogous flight in February 2023, when 200 prisoners from Nicaragua had been launched and flown to the US.
Whereas rights observers sometimes hail such releases, they’ve additionally raised issues that they supply a possibility for Ortega to flush Nicaragua of dissent. Ortega has additionally sought to strip the beforehand launched prisoners of their citizenship and property in Nicaragua.
