Nicaragua has increased human rights violations and persecution of the opposition because it ratchets up its efforts to stifle dissent, a United Nations group of experts monitoring the country said Tuesday.
The Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua told the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, that the federal government continues increasing pressure on human rights defenders to force them to go away the country.
That persecution has prolonged to the education sector, where the federal government has systematically cancelled the legal status of personal universities and seized their campuses.
“We have observed the intentional and severe deprivation of economic and social rights, particularly the best to education and academic freedom,” said Jan-Michael Simon, chair of the group. “Today, the university sector of Nicaragua as a complete now not has independent institutions. Nicaragua is being stripped of its mental capital and significant voices, leaving the country’s prospects and development on hold.”
Last month, the federal government confiscated the celebrated Jesuit-run University of Central America in Nicaragua. It was the most recent in a series of actions by authorities against the Catholic Church, but in addition amongst some 27 higher education institutions which were cancelled and confiscated.
The group noted that religious figures, particularly from the Catholic Church, are increasingly targets of attacks and a few have been forced to go away the country. Once abroad they’re sometimes stripped of their nationality and have their assets in Nicaragua confiscated.
The university and other education institutions were necessary centers of dissent throughout the popular protests in April in 2018 that became a referendum on President Daniel Ortega’s administration. Ortega was re-elected after jailing seven potential competitors in 2021.
The government’s pursuit of the opposition has continued and intensified. Students and other opposition figures have been imprisoned or forced into exile.
In February, the Nicaraguan government put 222 prisoners on a plane to the United States, declaring them traitors.
“The seriousness of those violations, at the side of the opposite crimes documented thus far, perpetrated by reason of the political identity of the group targeted, leads the Group of Experts to conclude that these constitute prima facie the crime against humanity of persecution on political grounds,” the group said.
The group asked the Nicaraguan government to permit independent and neutral organizations akin to the International Committee of the Red Cross into prisons where opponents are being held.
The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights also confirmed Tuesday that the human rights situation in Nicaragua continues deteriorating.
It said it had documented 27 cases up to now 12 months of Nicaraguans who left the country briefly for travel and weren’t allowed to return to the country in violation of international treaties. The practice has separated families, the office said.
