The US has secured the discharge of 135 political prisoners held in Nicaragua, together with college students and members of a religion organisation.
In a press release on Thursday, US Nationwide Safety Adviser Jake Sullivan mentioned the prisoners have been among the many hundreds of Nicaraguans caught up in a multiyear rights crackdown by the federal government of President Daniel Ortega.
The prisoners have been despatched to neighbouring Guatemala and will relocate from there to the US, in keeping with Sullivan.
Guatemalan President Bernardo Arevalo’s workplace confirmed a aircraft carrying previously detained Nicaraguans had landed within the nation early on Thursday.
“Nobody needs to be put in jail for peacefully exercising their basic rights of free expression, affiliation, and working towards their faith,” Sullivan mentioned in a statement.
He mentioned the political prisoners had been arrested as a result of they have been thought-about a menace to the “authoritarian rule” of Ortega and his vice chairman and spouse, Rosario Murillo. He known as on Nicaragua to “instantly stop the arbitrary arrest and detention of its residents for merely exercising their basic freedoms”.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken additionally hailed the discharge in a put up on the social media platform X.
“Nicaraguans deserve democracy and freedom from persecution of their dwelling 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 straight below their management”.
The report detailed dozens of circumstances the place detainees have been “tortured by way of varied types of sexual abuse and electrical shocks”.
The crackdowns largely started amid the student-led protests that swept the country in 2018.
These protests have been sparked by a proposed social safety legislation that may have elevated employee contributions whereas lowering pensions and different advantages.
Tens of hundreds 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 people have 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 below his management.
His administration has continued to take actions to tamp down dissent, together with earlier than the latest elections in 2021.
Authorities arrested or pressured into exile dozens of opposition candidates within the lead-up to the vote. Additionally 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 a press release earlier this week, UN Excessive Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk mentioned it was “distressing to see civic house persevering with to be severely eroded in Nicaragua, and the way the train of basic civil and political rights is changing into increasingly more troublesome”.
The UN report additionally raised considerations over the proposal of a brand new legislation that may permit Nicaraguan authorities to prosecute people residing overseas for sure crimes. The legislation may very well be used to “strain and intimidate exiled residents and foreigners for the legit train of their proper to freedom of expression, and different rights”, the report mentioned.
Amongst these launched this week have 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 have been launched and flown to the US.
Whereas rights observers sometimes hail such releases, they’ve additionally raised considerations that they supply a chance for Ortega to flush Nicaragua of dissent. Ortega has additionally sought to strip the beforehand launched prisoners of their citizenship and property in Nicaragua.
